Feedback on Champion Challenge
Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2024 7:49 pm
There are certain issues I see with Champion Challenge Morale that I'd like to bring up.
Before the ability rework patch, in small-scale PvP such as group-ranked matches against decent opponents, success required a good DPS rotation, the target's tank being punted, and the target's healers being crowd-controlled – the "golden sequence" as one person once said. Currently, damage is consistently very high, and aside from the proc ICD and weaponskill counting for autoattacks, I can't pinpoint what exactly has changed. However, these changes, or perhaps others unknown to me, have certainly led to the recurring meta of tunneling a target rather than involving the strategic gameplay as previously described.
In this high-damage meta, previously core morales such as Demolishing Strike have mostly lost their purpose, especially in team compositions that include other sources of morale or non-morale armor debuffs.
Additionally, the most recent version of Champion Challenge is activatable way beyond 5 ft, which causes a target to warp approximately 5-10 feet towards the tank. This warping effect is problematic, especially when a target has immunity to roots, which Champion Challenge usually prevents. For instance, immunity via morales (Focused Mind) or set procs (Unconstrained, Victorious Proc) can be bypassed, causing the target to warp towards the tank and be rooted for around 1-1.5 seconds alongside the warp animation finishing. Check video: https://youtu.be/He3FbOiUWIc
The game's logic dictates that lower-tier morales should have lesser effectiveness or be removable/deniable by higher-tier morales. Champion Challenge, in its current design, is partially ignoring this logic by being sold as a double-edged sword, applying the root also on the tank. I see the point here for ORvR play.
However, I'd have to question that in the context of small-scale PvP. Here, most of the time, the victim is a Melee-DPS. That said, tanks can reproducibly often use the morale from max range (due to lag?), which in most cases leads to the target being ChCh'ed further than 5 ft away (despite the warping effect - which I assume was added due to this problem) with the result of the target not being able to use any abilities as it exceeds their max attack range. This effectively means that you lose a big portion of your team's damage output, and the only option left is sustaining damage (And yes, 10 seconds is huge for this type of content), preventing any tactical moves for the duration of it. From this point on the tunneled target has an effective immunity of 20 seconds outside of the Champion Challenge before it can be used again. For most melee classes, this the timewindow time to escape multiple snares that are reapplied constantly. What is actually the downside here, I'd love to ask is it just me or does it feel straight like an imbalanced morale as it is up very soon and has practically become an opener with a good chance to kill someone.
Before the ability rework patch, in small-scale PvP such as group-ranked matches against decent opponents, success required a good DPS rotation, the target's tank being punted, and the target's healers being crowd-controlled – the "golden sequence" as one person once said. Currently, damage is consistently very high, and aside from the proc ICD and weaponskill counting for autoattacks, I can't pinpoint what exactly has changed. However, these changes, or perhaps others unknown to me, have certainly led to the recurring meta of tunneling a target rather than involving the strategic gameplay as previously described.
In this high-damage meta, previously core morales such as Demolishing Strike have mostly lost their purpose, especially in team compositions that include other sources of morale or non-morale armor debuffs.
Additionally, the most recent version of Champion Challenge is activatable way beyond 5 ft, which causes a target to warp approximately 5-10 feet towards the tank. This warping effect is problematic, especially when a target has immunity to roots, which Champion Challenge usually prevents. For instance, immunity via morales (Focused Mind) or set procs (Unconstrained, Victorious Proc) can be bypassed, causing the target to warp towards the tank and be rooted for around 1-1.5 seconds alongside the warp animation finishing. Check video: https://youtu.be/He3FbOiUWIc
The game's logic dictates that lower-tier morales should have lesser effectiveness or be removable/deniable by higher-tier morales. Champion Challenge, in its current design, is partially ignoring this logic by being sold as a double-edged sword, applying the root also on the tank. I see the point here for ORvR play.
However, I'd have to question that in the context of small-scale PvP. Here, most of the time, the victim is a Melee-DPS. That said, tanks can reproducibly often use the morale from max range (due to lag?), which in most cases leads to the target being ChCh'ed further than 5 ft away (despite the warping effect - which I assume was added due to this problem) with the result of the target not being able to use any abilities as it exceeds their max attack range. This effectively means that you lose a big portion of your team's damage output, and the only option left is sustaining damage (And yes, 10 seconds is huge for this type of content), preventing any tactical moves for the duration of it. From this point on the tunneled target has an effective immunity of 20 seconds outside of the Champion Challenge before it can be used again. For most melee classes, this the timewindow time to escape multiple snares that are reapplied constantly. What is actually the downside here, I'd love to ask is it just me or does it feel straight like an imbalanced morale as it is up very soon and has practically become an opener with a good chance to kill someone.