Thread: Early impressions on U6 E RvR fights

my rock is prettier then the rock you live under and it smells less funky.

Originally Posted by zaskoda

LOL - had a night or two likethat

after raiding a bit on freepside it becomes evident that the ratio of creeps dps to freep healing/defense is not good. When the groups are > 6-9 there is enough dps that morale level is not so important, like it is in smaller fights. If freeps can simply last through the wl bubbles, then its usually clear sailing. On the flip side, freep dps to creep defence/morale is about right. One way to solve this problem is to lower the ratio between tactical mitigation rating and % mitigation in the moors. Freeps are able to get higher mitigation then they should be able to get.

Freep healing can get pretty silly in U6 both in 1-1, small group, and raid sized fights. Basically if the freep mini/rk decides to heal himself or another freep... the creeps might as well change targets as it's not going to die. (we're assuming the healer is halfway decent that is). Captain rallying cry is really silly with the cooldown. How often do creeps die? Very often. How often is rallying cry off of cooldown? Very often.

Oh and whoever decided to put -power cost on the armor is an idiot. They just completely threw out one of the ways to actually win in a long fight, taking out the opposing team's power supply (and we're talking the 5+ minute fights). That disadvantages creeps even more because that was one of the very very very few tools that creeps had to take on maxed out freeps. (the other ones being just having 3x their numbers to overwhelm them by brute force or to somehow catch them in a mistake (like an ambush or in a long line of horses))

Originally Posted by aklouie

Oh and whoever decided to put -power cost on the armor is an idiot. They just completely threw out one of the ways to actually win in a long fight, taking out the opposing team's power supply (and we're talking the 5+ minute fights).

The inc damage buff is larger than the -power cost buff. With audacity freeps will be using MORE power to do the same job, it actually is helping creeps win the longer lasting fights (powah bannerz)

The heals from Coda(outside of Warspeech) are pretty damn good when they crit. Seems like they crit half the time when I use that Coda-I've had one crit for 4.5 k or there abouts. But good focus fire- something creepside excels at- can still take down targets even with the coda.

So far I have done a little better with power management in fights than before the update.

Originally Posted by notacavetroll

The inc damage buff is larger than the -power cost buff. With audacity freeps will be using MORE power to do the same job, it actually is helping creeps win the longer lasting fights (powah bannerz)

You know audacity has -%power cost on it right?

Originally Posted by tkroll

The heals from Coda(outside of Warspeech) are pretty damn good when they crit. Seems like they crit half the time when I use that Coda-I've had one crit for 4.5 k or there abouts. But good focus fire- something creepside excels at- can still take down targets even with the coda.

So far I have done a little better with power management in fights than before the update.

In all honesty, the improvement to healing efficiency cuts both ways.

We've been able to pull kills out of larger groups this update that flat out would have been impossible last update. They key being rapid target swapping, picking good targets, and when possible finding the ungrouped lampreys that cling to the grouped freeps to nibble at their crumbs. Induction duration debuffs and raking claws are wonderful things when used together vs minstrels and RK healers. Having 1-2 team members peel off the DPS target to harass healers and stop inductions nets us kills.

I remain on the fence as to whether healing will need some sort of drop, I want to see how things are rolling when most dedicated players have rank 7 audacity.

One thing I will say for sure, I MUCH prefer the frustration of not being quite able to get through someone's healing for a kill to the frustration of simply dying in .5 seconds.

Originally Posted by gimli4480

You know audacity has -%power cost on it right?

Did you even read what you quoted?

Originally Posted by zaskoda

Did you even read what you quoted?

I did. I'm just saying there is that other factor.

Originally Posted by gimli4480

I did. I'm just saying there is that other factor.

Damage reduction scales to -30%
Power reduction scales to -18%
Ergo..

Originally Posted by zaskoda

Damage reduction scales to -30%
Power reduction scales to -18%
Ergo..

It's actually a bit more mathematically complicated.

Your average damage per power goes down, but so does your average power use per minute... and that is acted against by your ICPR. It's actually very plausible to have a situation where your damage/power efficiency is lowered but you also reach a higher ICPR than your average power burn and are impossible to run out of power.

This is mainly something that would come up for minstrels/rk, because they have large enough power pools to last through the entire banner of terror debuff duration without going out of power (this was true pre-U6, and is more true now due to the power reduction from audacity).

Keep in mind that our power drains are mitigated by audacity as well.

Fights seem to be baring this out so far. Minstrels in particular are practically impossible to run dry in a fight.

Originally Posted by Sezneg

Fights seem to be baring this out so far. Minstrels in particular are practically impossible to run dry in a fight.

I am curious, do wargs still get thee +power requirement (disease) skill? I know it was fairly high ranked requirement but would like to see how that ties in with power banner, -incoming healing, and the weaver power drain skill.

Granted, 1/2 of this can be fixed with one in combat store pot of cures.

Honestly given the power pools of freeps, and the offset on power costs + ICPR against drains + usage, I am seeing no effect on trying to burn them down. Freeps used to be forced to move from a banner of terror and you can visibly see their power pools depleting over time in a long fight (as long as you keep them all in combat). Not so much anymore. We had a pretty decently long skirmish a couple nights ago under the influence of an R3 banner... healer power pools still looked awfully high. It's only when we force absolute maximum and inefficient healing over a long period of time that we see it. But that doesn't really occur in any semi-even fight. Creeps as they are right now, cannot put on that amount of pressure to force that.

Originally Posted by gimli4480

You know audacity has -%power cost on it right?

Sometimes i just....uh, welll ... i dunno

Edit: NM, reread my first post, ^ gota be a troll attempt

Originally Posted by aklouie

Honestly given the power pools of freeps, and the offset on power costs + ICPR against drains + usage, I am seeing no effect on trying to burn them down. Freeps used to be forced to move from a banner of terror and you can visibly see their power pools depleting over time in a long fight (as long as you keep them all in combat). Not so much anymore. We had a pretty decently long skirmish a couple nights ago under the influence of an R3 banner... healer power pools still looked awfully high. It's only when we force absolute maximum and inefficient healing over a long period of time that we see it. But that doesn't really occur in any semi-even fight. Creeps as they are right now, cannot put on that amount of pressure to force that.

Essentially, we are left to rely on hard target swaps. For right now this seems to work. Our concerns are that the window of time to save someone when they are at ~4 audacity is a lot shorter than it is at 7. So it will be a lot easier for healers to pick up our target swaps once everyone is done with the gear grind for season 1.

Surprisingly, I don't see a lot of target forward healing from freeps so far. That potentially nukes our target swaps into the ground before we even start them.

I'm not going to make a judgement on things until I see them in another week or so when audacity is maxed and we start seeing some of the better coordinated freep raids about. I'm concerned about it, though.

I will concur with V on one thing though, the terror banner has very little impact on healer power pools. There is no urgency in freeps under its effect to move out from it. They essentially just power right through it.

That is too bad on the power. Seems practical to boost creepside power drains as a response. Seems like that could somehow be tied to class traits but I admit I am not too familiar with the traits for creeps or if they have a slot to spare. Doesn't seem likely.

Originally Posted by cmal

That is too bad on the power.

What aspect of it exactly? 13k moral flies is a great boost for the power drains aswell, i dont see why any creep would complain about the new power changes

Originally Posted by cmal

That is too bad on the power. Seems practical to boost creepside power drains as a response. Seems like that could somehow be tied to class traits but I admit I am not too familiar with the traits for creeps or if they have a slot to spare. Doesn't seem likely.

Well, I don't really "enjoy" power draining as a mechanic. I don't think being helpless and out of power is a fun feature of pvp.

The problem is, we rely on winning the attrition war and running freep healers dry because historically we have never been able to punch through your healing the way you guys punch through ours.

Add audacity to that, and it becomes a nightmare.

I won't go into too much detail, but the testing that was done of pvp with audacity had at most 1-2 healers on each side (10 creeps with 1 wl/1 defiler vs 10 freeps with 1 captain/1 rk healing, and a similar test with more along the lines of 16 on each side). There was never really any testing done of the kinds of group makeups we're starting to see out there (3+ captains, 2+ minstrels, and Meraithe all healing in a 16 man group). It is frankly impossible to punch through that level of healing with even numbers, and it is now also impossible to outlast the power supply of said group.

Our healing situation has improved, but it's not at the same level of potency (HPS output vs incoming DPS is heavily in favor of reeps), nor is it as available (35% of all unique freep logins this last week were min/rk/capt while not quite 20% of all unique creep logins were WL/DF). So we not only have fewer healers, but they are less effective than their freep counterparts.

In a book where healing is the key to winning group fights, this is a very bad position to be in.

I'd rather they looked at tuning healing output while in the moors.

1 Healer at maximum single target HPS should be able to outheal the DPS of x pure DPS class players at once max, and x should be equal for both side's healers. You can argue for a high number for x, or a low number and there are sound arguments for either. What is most important is that x is equal on BOTH sides (ie: a single high ranked defiler throwing a full HoT stack onto a target should have the same "we can't kill it, switch targets!" effect for you guys that meraithe throwing a full HoT stack on a target has for us). Whether this means a buff to creep healing output or a moors specific reduction to freep healing output would depend on the direction Turbine wants to go.

Originally Posted by Sezneg

The problem is, we rely on winning the attrition war and running freep healers dry because historically we have never been able to punch through your healing the way you guys punch through ours.

Right, just the nature of WL rezzes and creep mechanics has always suggested to me that creeps would rely on a longer fight to wear down a freep group while the freeps would rely on more up front healing with one or two in combat rezzes. Of course this is going to depend on the makeup of the groups.

With so many captains, there are too many in combat rezzes.

With so many minstrels and the absolute forcing of creeps to focus on a single target to have a chance to kill it, it makes it extremely difficult to keep all minstrels in combat (you lose DPS of weavers/ba's tasked on keeping them on combat). Hence freeps get off out of combat rezzes which are more often (if you can get out of combat) than creeps can, with the same effectiveness.

Addition onto this note.

Freep healers all do more damage than creep healers. So Freep raids of RKs, Captains, and Minstrels are highly effective and dangerous in the DPS department. When you have that with a capability to easily shift to high output healing, you get a group that is invincible against any comparable sized group of creeps and yet can mow down creeps.

You cannot kill them, with the moronic audacity changes you cannot run them out of power. Right now, unless you dramatically outnumber them or out coordinate them (or they make a mistake that is capitalized on), comparable ranked, skilled, and audacitied creeps cannot win a fight against a well geared freep group at all with the above composition.

It's back to SOA days where blowing every rez, killing a handful of freeps for 5x the losses, and still wiping is considered a "good fight" for the creeps.

Originally Posted by aklouie

audacitied

No such word exists

Would love to hear a freep leaders views on the issue but I don't know that we have one at the moment. Remember Vyxe a lot of this is Greek to me (the nature of the fights, not the mechanics behind them or the terminology...bad choice of colloquialism) as I avoid the majority of group fights. I play both sides and like hearing both sides.

Originally Posted by PurebloodWorg

No such word exists

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/audacited?s=t

Worg is right. The world will end tomorrow.

Originally Posted by PurebloodWorg

No such word exists