lemao wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2024 6:09 pm
My advice for you would be to not ask these questions on the forum because the chance that the answer will be inaccurate or completely bias is like 90% (see first response i.e.)
Sadly this is pretty true. I can speak from the perspective of someone who plays all 3 archetypes at bis or near bis on both realms in all forms of organized content. Such as 6man kite/roam, 12man roam, warbands, city, SCs and so on. Will try to keep inaccuracies to a minimum, and can ensure 0 bias.
Healing is only strong in the way that it is functioning properly and not too weak, not really OP by any stretch. But the ease of accessibility to doing well as a healer may be a little too easy. In a group setting you have heal debuffs, proper CC, guard punts and channel/morale drops which are what score kills and players who cannot perform these properly tend to think healing is OP because they don't utilize all the tools at their disposal to properly land kills. A lot of people only play in solo or 1v1 against dps shamans or something and the game is not balanced around 1v1 so their opinions are often very skewed when it comes to balance.
RP/Zeal are still good at ST healing, able to aoe heal in a pinch as well. With strong utility like stagger, silence, 25% inc heal tactic (blessing of grungi/chaos), absorb/armor proc tactics, wounds buff, winds of insanity/windblock m4 for zeal, etc. Their rune/mark buff system also got reworked recently, massively buffing the granted abilities - one allows the player access to selfcleanse now which is quite strong.
DoK/WP are still great at group healing and aoe healing with weaker ST healing potential and bring utility via proc auras, ap pump, aoe cleanse tactic, wounds buff for WP, and group absorb cd.
AM/Sham are usually strongest raw healing output atm in most forms of content, having large throughput but more fragile compared to the others when caught out since they lack the armor value of WP/DoK and the 50% damage reduction buff that Zeal/RP have. They bring good utility in the form of snare puddles, morale pump, and situationally aoe punt or instarez.
I won't speak upon the healer dps specs, as it's too niche and long of an answer for me to get in to but zeal/rp dps specs got a minor rework somewhat recently and are definitely playable in certain situations now (mostly solo, roaming 12man and warbands).
WH/WE don't dominate as much as they did in the past but both are still strong in the right hands and the right situations. Both flourish in smallscale content like solo/duo/trio and 6man roam/SC as well as in city sieges. WH has a bit more flexibility due to their strong morales and aoe armor debuff, allowing them to be run in roaming 12s and city aoe 12s a bit easier while WE is more confined to ST gameplay.
Sorceress (and Bright Wizard) are currently both in a strong spot in both their ST and aoe builds. Definitely viable. Not much more to say there.
Choppa/Slayer/Mara/WL are all still very strong - they have all seen changes (some nerfs, some buffs, some new abilities) within the last year but all remain very competent dps for all forms of group content and are desired in both ST and aoe situations. Can't really go wrong with any of them currently.
Faction balance is a weird one to answer. I can only speak for EU timezones, since I don't play NA often enough to know what it's like there. Overall, the population on both sides remains relatively 50/50 but on any given day and at any given time that may not be the case. To explain; I mean that the population/"who wins" balance is mostly determined player behavior. By which organized guilds are playing on which side and at what time. For example: you may have a day where during EU primetime 3 of the stronger organized guild warbands end up on the same side at the same time while the other side may only have 1 organized warband and 1-2 pug warbands. This happens somewhat often and flipflops between each side on a daily basis.
I've actually been studying a lot of data lately by looking through skirmish reports on the killboard and trying to discern any trends there but genuinely it just falls on who logs in when and where. Today for example Order was absolutely steamrolling Destro in the lakes for almost 3 hours straight, but then Destro had 2 organized warbands log on and for the next hour and a half at that point Destro had a massive kill lead in the lakes with a zone take and a fortress attempt. Then after the fortress it shifted back to being roughly even in kills as Order saw an organized warband form up to match the Destro.
