Strikejk wrote: ↑Mon 27 Apr 2020 6:42 PM
Hi Uthred. I personall don't mind GTAoE as it is, but I would also not mind it having LoS requirement. Either way I can work with it, however the DPS is already very low on GTAoE and you have a severe range restriction which is both enough to make GTAoE less effective imo. You can easily outheal GTAoE with basic heal pots (or any healer for that matter) or simply just run out of the impact zone due to quick damage drop off.
That being said, the biggest problem I see is that
Static Tempest is already incredible powerful in tower/keep fights and almost always the deciding factor when it comes to these fights. Weakening a different tactic like with GTAoE will subsequently increase the effectivness of the Static Tempest tactic even further, and it is already way too strong as it is.
Static Tempest goes through walls/ceiling without any LoS requirement making avoiding it impossible as you often don't even see it as player. Furthermore it destroys any strategy as a permanent lockdown for 25s or more + the remove of stun immunity is basically an auto-lose for the victim.
Static Tempest is so powerful that the
only proper counterplay in the game is a Static Tempest from your own.
This subsequently means that the realm / Battlegroup with the most STs wins. Basically an I-Win button.
With that being said we come to a second problem, the uneven distribution fo static tempest in the realms.
The raw numbers of available chars with ST in each realm:
Hibernia: 2
Albion: 1
Midgard: 1
As you can see Hibernia has already 50% more static tempests in raw numbers.
Now if you factor in the distribution of each class it gets even worse. As there are plenty of Mentalists out there, easily as many as Friar and Thanes if not more, with also having the Champions on top of that.
Furthermore we have to look at the distribution of classes per average group and the Mentalist is a stable in Hibernian groups, while Thanes are not and neither are Friar who are often replaced by double clerics instead. And ofc the Champion comes on top of it again as decent melee for the average group.
Another point is the effectiveness in delivery as you need to target an enemy and be in range to use it, you need especially for tower fights a class with good survivability and yes you guessed right Hibernia is on top of the ladder again with their champion who has the easiest time delivering his payload, with Thane being a close second then Friar and lastly Mentalist.
Sadly we aint over yet, cause now we have to look at the severity of losing a character to the group in case he dies in the act of delivering his payload and as you can probably already tell Hibernia wins again with their Champion, followed by Thane, Mentalist and lastly with a big gap inbetween the Friar who has by far the biggest consequence to the group if he dies due to providing buffs, resistances and heals.
But we can't stop yet , cause now we come to the distribution of RP for each class to find out how likely it is for each char to put the RPs into Static Tempest. How do we do that? Simply, we look at what other RAs that char has to choose from and how much that char can make use of static tempest by himself, for example via slam.
And I'm certain people will see me as Hibernian haters at this point but once again the leading pack is Hibernia:
1. Champion, he can make use of the ST himself by having slam available which allows him to perma lockdown an opponent for 25s while also not having numerous other big impact RAs to spec into compared to other classes.
2. Thane is a close second to the champion for the same reason.
3. Mentalist is only on #3 because they have other good RAs to choose from but they also can make use of it via a stun combo
4. Friar with a big gap inbetween because not only can they not make use of the ST by themself due to lack of any stun available but they also need plenty of RPs for the healing and buff RAs as it is the only class of these 4 who is also a healer on top the regular damage dealing abilities.
As you can see, there are plenty of factors that go into the distribution and likelyhood of having ST in each group and subsequently BG, which then is the deciding factor in battles.
In a nutshell by my estimate Hibernia as roughly a 3 times as many ST as the other realms. 2 times from the raw number advantage when it comes to classes and another 1 time due to classes with high availability and high likelihood of putting RPs into static tempest. With Albion being at the lowest end of the spectrum.
That being said the devs can probably check the availability of ST for each realm directly in the server.
TLDR; GTAoE isn't as horrible as it is made out to be, but I wouldn't cry if it gets nerfed. However the real culprit and balance breaker in this game is static tempest which will be even stronger in comparison if all other tactics get nerfed. Static Tempest leads to a boring autowin where you cant use any tactic against it except for using static tempest yourself. This however leads to autowins for certain realms due to the very uneven distribution of the realm ability.
Sorry for the wall of text but there was a lot to the issue that needed to be clarified so people who are less familiar with this topic understand it properly.