Counterplay to Slayer & BW "trains"

[Mizeravel89]

If each slayer is properly guarded and tanks are using KD/Punt properly, nothing to be done imo. Shatter is not reliable or fast enough to counter it.

Just get melted ® and call it balance.

[Dabbart]

Tanks need to time/call Challenges, and quick M2 Bellows drops when needed. I have found, a lot of the 24mans run a single BW, or 2 at most, get your tanks to keep him targeted, and cycle interrupts. Have at least 1 chosen run CT increase aura and either sit on the Bomb or on their healers(preferably with a MSH to guard).

Super Punt the main slayer and call a Z for a stagger, the enemy will have main heals on him, so a kill will be tough right away, but punt/stagger and that's a solid 8+seconds w/o any DPS from that Slayer. When he rejoins, drop an M2 Bellow on him and you just gave your group nearly 20s w/o the main Slayer DPSing.

Other than that, you need to pressure their backline, and you can't try to just run through them. Go around. Or AoE root/Stagger to get past the frontline then bomb their healers or rely on MSHs. Basically, if they have a better Bomb than you, don't try to fight them head on, and try not to give them 24 targets to hit at once.

Kill the healers and everything else dies. Interrupt enough of the healers casting and you get deaths, deaths=rezz chains, interrupt those, and with enough pressure everyone dies.

TLDR: Slayer/BW is rough, and has some stupid damage potential. But always remember, if one team is organized and in coms and the other isn't, comps matter to a far lesser degree. Counter-play requires teamwork and communication.

Edit: Also, if you want to kite/grief a little bit; farm Rats. They drop mats for Snare pots. Make a crap ton of snare pots, hand them out to everyone. with 4 shamans in a WB, that's 60 snare puddles every 3min... Just saying... Edit2:Also, Order Bias on Rats. Y'all can farm them at the SC NPC in Altdorf while QQing...

[agemennon675]

Most effective way to counter a melee blob is like you said: spread around have sorcs/magus to aoe that blob, usually its extremely hard to guard swap to healers if you have a melee blob pushing deep, so single target asisting down enemy healers while you kite the main blob is another strat that works against that. Get your team Black Guards with %50 outgoing healdebuff on every healer and melee blob dies. Keep %100 aoe slow on the blob again with Black Guards. You can also bellow rotate their melee easily.

[Gurf]

You do what Order has to do when it encounters the Destro melee train, you spread out when they are aoeing close together, then you morale bomb all together. Or you slow the ball using Sticky feet and avoid it, resing anyone who gets caught. Its actually much easier for Destro to avoid the melee train than Order as Order are minus 2 pulls in the City which can pull you into the death ball.

[emiliorv]

If each slayer is properly guarded and tanks are using KD/Punt properly, nothing to be done imo. Shatter is not reliable or fast enough to counter it.

Just get melted ® and call it balance.

All the strategies are based on bad gameplay by order, if they payed properly you are done => tanks melt even faster than his guarded dps under undefendable own dmg and undefendable guarded dmg...with 24 aoe cap anything in range is melted.

But hey! have been that way for 12 years!! and its working as intended...so yes, its balanced...

...i wonder why morale dmg was nerfed after the aoe cap raised to 24 and other abilities that went out of control remained untouched....

[Gurf]

Yes its so imbalanced Destro win 75-100% of City instances recently

[JarlBerzirk]

Why does every single thread turn into you biased players crying about balance and reee order has it easier reeee destro has it easier...this dude is just asking for advice on tactics and just like every thread it gets derailed by the same nonsensical dribble spewed by biased bubbled players...keep on topic and get your whining out of the forums for once...its getting really old and boring at this point...

[emiliorv]

Yes its so imbalanced Destro win 75-100% of City instances recently

Because order are dumb enough to not play their best clases...you deserve being farmed.

For sure you, as a main slayer player, will defend that its balanced until the end of the world...and trying to hide how OP slayer is behing the wall of the fail of order as a whole realm => im not expecting any kind of honesty in your comments, we all know what slayer is....

When you face a proper wb with a stack of slayers played properly you know you are done, probably top guilds can try to outplay/counterplay but its a really hard task.

[JarlBerzirk]

I'd like to ask the community for tips to handle this very popular comp in Order premades that (at least on my end) very frequently turns into a loss in cities.

Strats that I currently know/heard from WB leaders/try to execute:

- Positioning: don't get caught/slowed by the melee ball, try to circle around it by applying your own AOE slows and DPS the inside at an angle. Issue is it's very hard for our DPS group to avoid slows themselves and once slowed, the capability to outmaneuver is limited. I also find that trying to execute this strategy frequently turns into very little DPS pressure while it is relatively easy for the opposing team to pick a slowed player or 2 and DPS him/them down quickly.

- Shatter Rampage: as a BO I make sure I'm focusing as much as possible on shattering Rampaging slayers to make our tanks/DPS defenses work again. Issue is that to shatter I need to be in melee range so I have very little time to execute that before melting myself. Waagh helps a lot here but there is still the GCD and wading through the midgets, tab-targeting until I see the debuff pop up. I think here what we could do better is assign tanks to slayers to take away that tab-targeting loss of time.

- Get to the backline to pressure healers: I find this comp usually brings an abundance of tanky WPs that sit in the ball so there are no proper "backlines". You can try and pester the RPs and AMs rezzing on the outskirts but then you are missing quite a lot of pressure/disrupt on the DPS train itself.

Questions/ideas:

- Would a very strong single target "assassin" team work? Say a BG to punt the highest dpsing slayer's guard and a couple WE/Choppas to DPS it down quickly before disengaging?

- Would a rDPS heavy comp with Shammy puddles stand a chance at DPSing the inside of the ball? It seems hard as Sorcs and Maguses need to stay still a little.

Please share what you can/want to help me out! Thanks.

A huge counter to slayer balls is mara knockdown. Maras are very important in cities, their damage along with insane utility and debuffs, not to mention their survivability make them the best melee dps option destro has to offer. Pair a couple with a mSH harassing the backline and a high geared magus and you're easily topping any order balls damage output. The biggest key is to spread out. Slayer balls work because traditionally, destro loves to group up, and order know this and prey on it. When you spread out, rotate challenges, and rotate tank bellows, their plan essentially becomes 50% less effective, rampage or no rampage.

[Gurf]

Yes its so imbalanced Destro win 75-100% of City instances recently

Because order are dumb enough to not play their best clases...you deserve being farmed.

For sure you, as a main slayer player, will defend that its balanced until the end of the world...and trying to hide how OP slayer is behing the wall of the fail of order as a whole realm => im not expecting any kind of honesty in your comments, we all know what slayer is....

When you face a proper wb with a stack of slayers played properly you know you are done, probably top guilds can try to outplay/counterplay but its a really hard task.

I don't have Slayer main but do have a Slayer, but don't find it half as powerful as the forum here seems to think it is, due to survivability issues I usually prefer to play WL. A fully enraged Slayer is squishiest class in game. SMASH guild don't even run with many Slayers in their City instance any more and they have some of the highest rr players on Order.

But I have been in City with Slayer train as Order and lost plenty of times, it just took better more adaptable play by Destro rather than the standard group up and aoe together and hope for the best. One instance we had 4-5 Slayers and were wrecked by a group which had 2 Range SH, 2 WE and a Black Guard all assisting the healers while avoiding the Slayers, which are supposedly the weakest Destro class in City but have tools to avoid melee ball and when assist properly on good targets you soon realise how squishy the Slayer and BW are.

Waiting for someone clever to say its a LTP issue on my side .....