Albion RvR TL Report

[Kagato.]

Here is the first Albion RvR Report for the month of August. Make note that the format is subject to change. The subject of this report is about the challenges and issues our realm faces in RvR. This report is not about specific classes in RvR nor should it be. Please keep the discussion constructive.

Albion RvR Report, August 2003

Overview:
Albion is experiencing more difficulty in forming competitive RvR groups compared to the other realms. While Albion performs on a more equivalent level in large-scale conflicts, the realm fares more poorly in 8 vs. 8 battles due to a number of factors. The result is a large amount of frustration felt by lower realm-ranked Albion teams, pick-up groups and casual players.

Concern: Availability of Key Support Abilities
A chief issue facing Albion RvR teams is the relative difficulty in grouping the necessary classes to provide key support abilities. Key support abilities include base and spec line buffs, primary healing, all six spell resist buffs, primary crowd control, level five group speed, group endurance regeneration and pulsing blade turn. To encompass all of these major abilities, an Albion group would require five separate classes (Cleric, Friar, Paladin, Minstrel, Sorcerer and Theurgist), while Midgard would need four (Healer, Skald, Shaman and Runemaster) and Hibernia would need three (Bard, Druid and Warden). Due to this higher requirement for specific classes combined with a higher number of class types available to the realm, Albion groups experience greater difficulty in forming well supported teams for RvR. More often, an Albion group must sacrifice one or more of these key support abilities and instead rely on secondary support abilities such as group ablatives, caster-level speed, secondary crowd control and secondary healing. Furthermore, compared to equivalently supported groups in the other realms, Albion teams that manage to group all of the primary aforementioned support abilities are more restricted in flexibility since more group slots are filled.

Concern: Class Desirability
Certain battle-turning abilities for Albion are only available within undesirable spell lines. These underplayed spell lines include major RvR abilities such as GTAE, PBT and bolt-ranged AE mez. The overall spell lines that offer these abilities are generally viewed as lacking in either utility or damage potential, especially when compared to similar lines in the other realms. The perception that these lines force the player to become a “one-trick pony” has resulted in less people speccing their characters to include these abilities or these abilities are only acquired at a lower spell level and potency. The lack of desirability in playing classes with over-specialized, but important group abilities contributes to the difficulty Albions face in competing against the other realms in RvR.

There are also other Albion classes that perform well in the area of PvE, but poorly in RvR for varying reasons. Such classes that have high populations, yet relatively low average Realm Points need to be investigated on an individual basis to determine why they are not as viable in the RvR setting. Appropriate adjustments can be made with the aid of the respective Class Team Leads.

Concern: Realm Abilities
Albion RvR groups currently rely on certain group active RA’s to compensate for weaknesses in support and suppression capability in the group, while other class-specific RA’s are viewed as not worth the points or broken. A common view in the Albion community is that a number of group RA’s have been used to balance Albion groups against the other realms. Lower realm-ranked and casual players perceive an inequity between the realms arising from the view that Albions need to acquire realm abilities to compete against the natural abilities in comparative classes from the other realms.

Concern: Frontier Layout and Keep Design
The Albion Frontier is arguably the most difficult to navigate out of the three realms. There are many high-level aggressive mobs that spawn or patrol along major pathways. Other aggressive mobs are very difficult to spot, tend to agro in multiples and are also situated near high traffic regions. Low visibility from hilly landscapes and dense forests of trees add to the difficulty in traversing the terrain. Lower-level and even more experienced Albions are less inclined to explore their frontier and help defend keeps at the risk of an XP death. The Albion Power Relic Keep is also the only Relic Keep that isn’t situated on a hill, making it less defensible. Out of all three Power Relic Keeps, Albion’s is also furthest away from the nearest Border Keep. Line of sight problems with defending Albion Frontier Keeps is another concern of the Albion community.

Specific Issues: Crowd Control
In group vs. group combat, the ability to cast area-effect mez, root or stun first still plays a decisive role in affecting the outcome of the conflict. A major concern arises in small-scale combat since Albion groups tend to lose the initiative in the use of crowd control. This is because of the availability of range 1500 instant-AE mez, root and/or stun in Hibernia and Midgard, but not Albion. The range 1875, three-second cast, AE mez provided to Albion is not as an effective tool for players trying to gain the initiative in casting crowd control. The other forms of crowd control available in Albion are even less effective in this regard. This disadvantage is more pronounced in skirmishes involving groups traveling at level 5+ speeds that can more easily run within 1500 range and utilize various forms of instant-AE CC first.

Specific Issues: Secondary Support Healing
In practical RvR, it is relatively difficult to switch between casting heals and engaging in melee combat as opposed to healing and suppression, yet Albion’s only secondary support healer is also a dedicated melee class. This results in many Albion players feeling frustrated due to a lack of support healing in their RvR group. The other realms each have atleast one class that can cast secondary healing and is designed for additional support and/or suppression roles.

Specific Issues: Defensive Abilities
Many of the PvE tools available to Albion tank classes for defending vulnerable group mates either aren’t coded to be utilized or are much less effective in RvR. Though this affects all realms, Albion particularly suffers the most from this situation since the realm has the highest number of “soft target” classes. Major support and suppression abilities such as primary crowd control and PBT are also assigned to Albion cloth-caster classes, but available to heavier armored classes in the other realms.

Specific Issues: RvR Class Recognition
Certain classes that play vital roles in Albion RvR groups can be easily identified by enemy players. Unique items such as instruments and armor types are the cause of this issue. This makes it less challenging for players in the other realms to target specific support functions in an Albion group and more frustrating for Albion support players. As a result of visual design, Midgard classes do not experience this issue to the same degree.

Specific Issues: Dual Speccing
Many Albions believe the need for dual speccing the Polearm or Two-Handed style lines to be unfair considering dual speccing is not a requirement for the heavy weapon users of the other realms. Having to spend more specialization points to achieve a comparable level of damage variance is seen as a handicap to those classes that are required to dual spec.


Other Issues:
- Extreme caster damage variance from high resist levels against spells and negative resists from debuffing
- Casters not getting an auto-target when their Bladeturn is hit by an arrow
- Line of sight targeting not taken from the head of the character
- Overwriting resurrection spells
- Prevalent use of buff bots
- Radar and other forms of cheats
- More noticeable incentives for taking and holding keeps
- Using loot bags in relic rooms to hinder relic targeting especially for those on SI client
- Using F7 and grab to easily pick up relics from the edge of the relic room due to the relics being situated close to the entry ramp
- Realm points for heals and crowd control
- Melee class usefulness in keep and relic sieges
- Albion lacking the Celerity buffs spell line
- Existence of “Flavor of the Month” classes in the other realms

 

[Kagato.]

And the Armsman 1.64 TL Report:

Overview

Armsman find themselves to be worthy contenders in PvE, but lacking in RvR. There are no discernable characteristics that would make the Armsman desirable in most optimal RvR groups. The ability to wear plate makes us a desirable class and gives one the sense that this is a combat ready melee class. From day one, we were the model for heavy tanks, though over time have slowly slipped behind the curve when it pertains to receiving new abilities, counter abilities, and other improvements that would essentially allow the Armsman to compete with other classes - other classes that have received new abilities either steadily throughout time or, in some cases, in over abundance in single updates.

Concerns



Most of our problem is lack of damage output. I don’t mean total damage per hit, but total damage in the allotted time a fight takes place. Most classes are front-end loaded when it comes to dealing damage. Mercenaries, blademasters and even Assassins are huge in this area and are (arguably) the most effective melee classes in the game. This damage comes and is dealt at a much more elevated rate than the Armsman can produce, largely due to our slower weapons and much higher penalty to hit negation (block, parry, evade and p/bt). The lighter tank classes and the assassin classes simply do not get hit often enough to make the higher damage that pure tanks deal effective. The equation dealing specifically with the Evade and to-hit ratio needs to be further examined when looking at why pure tank classes regularly lose these fights.



The effects bladeturn has on our slowest weapons and the armsman's ability to deliver damage.


Armsman usually run out of endurance before the first kill. This absolutely has a drastic affect on the outcome of many RvR encounters because it prevents an armsman from sprinting to catch the enemy. Without endurance we are also unable to use styles, which is the source of our real damage, and this easily hinders our damage output by more than 50%.


We should be the masters of all weapons without penalty and deal the damage befitting the name Armsman. If we were to look for differentation this would be it. We generally deal less damage over time and there is nothing group oriented, except perhaps three realm abilities that most armsman cannot afford to buy - Trip (10 points), Grapple (14 points) and Soldiers Barricade (10 points).



Specialization Line Issues.

The Dreaded Double Specializing of Polearm / two-handed:

There is little to no benefit to double specializing two-hand or Polearm. We have to spec the damage type to gain the minimum damage cap, and the weapon type to get the styles and maximum damage cap. The problem is that there is little consistency to doing this - as with my level 50 Polearm, for example, and level 50 slash, I can hit once for 325 damage, then again for 500 damage, all without critical strikes. Over time, however, this produces much less damage than our single specialization counterparts who strike maximum damage consistently with only one line in which to specialize, due also in part to how slow an armsman's weapons are. And in RvR combat, *speed* is everything. The double specialization only further assures a handicap where none is present in any other class.

Spellcrafting and Double Specing:

Since we have to double spec our weapons it essentially lose normally available spellcrafting points to be added to our stats. This should be looked at again and any weapons that have to be double specced should get double the available SC points.

One Handed Thrust Spec:

There are styles that are based off "You Evade" which is not in the Armsman core abilities. I would like to see a second thrust styles table created for classes that do not have evade but do have the ability to spec thrust as a damage type.

New Issues

Endurance:
I would like to see a “Battle Cry” similar to the hero stag form that would allow us to regenerate our endurance. I don’t think additional health would be out of line either.

Armsman no doubt need a larger pool of endurance. There are many reasons it is needed, but predominantly due the fact that if you use three big styles on a Polearm, or four styles (and/or shield slam) with S/S, armsman are ompletely out of endurance. That’s means we cannot sprint to keep up with enemies and we do not deal the damage that comes from the styles. Without styles, a one-handed armsman's damage is far less than those classes for which styles cost very little endurance. For an armsman, based on the damage I've mentioned, it would take 116 seconds, roughly, to kill a 2000 hit point enemy. This is assuming that healing, blocking, parrying, evading or any other number of other factors were involved, such as realm abilities. However, most RvR fights last 30 seconds.

Other Issues

Block Penalty of dual wielders:

The ability to block a dual wielding opponents attack is next to nothing in most circumstances. Please give us the ability to use our shields as intended against all attackers as dual wielders have a very high to hit ratio on us.

Xbow and its use:

We would like to see the ability to use our Xbows while moving. We would have to pre-load it but then are are able to run with it loaded ready to shoot at a moments notice without a wait period. Right now the range of the xbow makes it a death trap in most RvR instances. I believe we can wait to load it but are penalized when trying to shoot it.

2 Hand Specced Armsman:

There should be a way for a 2 hander to provide some type of guard ability or taunt that will help protect our rvr group such as the shield guard ability. Anyone specced this way is pretty much a group loner and cannot provide much in the way of protection. This could be said generally about all 2 handed specced characters.

General Shield Style Problem:

Slam has to land, no two ways about it. As the evade tables have been getting higher and higher, nothing has been done to this common attack. It consistently misses. The endurance cost is so high that trying to slam on a high evading target uses all of the endurance in four attempts. The to-hit bonus must be increased for the amount of endurance it consumes. Dexterity based fighters have no trouble landing their stuns. It’s getting nearly impossible to land ours stun and, as a result, is a large part of the problem when it comes to an armsman's survivability.

Armor:

It’s obvious, at least to most armsmen, that the armor factor in plate is really no factor at all - not when it comes to the survivability of plate-wearing classes in RvR. It seems that Chain mail equals plate in its effectiveness. We are regularly beat my most melee classes. Another possible solution to the plate-wearing class defensive issues might be to further raise the absorption rate of plate armor.

General RA Problems:

Soldiers Barricade:

The concept and idea of this RA is a great one. Having this ability could make us much more desirable in RvR groups. However, the reduction to ten points, is still not enough to convince most armsman to purchase - or simply not cheap enough to allow most armsman to purchase it even if they wanted to. This is due largely to armsman needing passive RA’s to try to achieve a little performance out of our regular attacks (even if those regular attacks are much slower than the average, it's still all we have). The sacrifice for this RA is far too great to convince most armsmen that taking more base damage "as a group" is a better thing. And it still doesn’t assist us with our damage output. This RA should be much easier to purchase if it was truly intended to be class specific.

Item Problems

No items to report at this time.. I need to research the items more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was a day late in posting this as I had a family emergency that required me to travel out of state. I just got back and posted this tonight. Mythic said they wouldn't be adding comments until tomorrow so I hope they will take care of us here. I was late on the date with a good excuse but not late as it pertains to when they were going to start adding comments. I think Mackey will take care of us and add his comments I added alot of the ideas and oversights into this report and I thank you all for your valuable input and ideas.

 

[pinball]

Once again another great TL Report report.

 

[Ekydus]

Yup Albion are pretty screwed.

 

[Belomar]

Good report, IMO.

Originally posted by Kagato.
- Using loot bags in relic rooms to hinder relic targeting especially for those on SI client

This has to be the lamest exploit ever.

 

[ReaLX]

Nice report, only real thing I want to see "fixed" is the endurance thing, we need some sort of End regen or something... (without having to get RA's to do the work)

 

[Kagato.]

As we have already seen though time and time again, it doesn't matter how great the TL reports are or how well backed up the arguments are, in the end Mythic will still screw us over

 

[pinball]

Poor kagato he works so hard on his reports and just gets ignored

 

[Kagato.]

Originally posted by pinball
Poor kagato he works so hard on his reports and just gets ignored

If I wrote the reports myself, they'd be a little less polite, and they'd by alot more Armsman fix suggestions in it.

 

[Surround Sound]

- Existence of “Flavor of the Month” classes in the other realms

 

[pez]

i thought the alb RvR report was very good but the arsman TL seems to whine about the most pointless things. I mean complaining about armsam getting screwed by pbt and running out of end is just stupid, thats what paladins and mercs are for. assist anyone? also i thought that giving 2 handers a guard ability is a bad idea, and as for thrust styles chaining off evade well its a problem for slash assasins chaining off block and is just par for the course imo, it seems like he wants his polearmsman to be able to do everyhing solo.

he did raise some points i wasn't aware of though

 

[ilienwyn]

The official web page for armsmen built by the new TL is this: http://www.meatshield.com/

Try going there and posting any ideas you have that can help us. Also atm TL is also looking for any good ideas for Master Abilities for our class. Best thing so far was hingebot (hinging twice as fast) which shows the state of our class

 

[Coim-]

Specific Issues: Dual Speccing
Many Albions believe the need for dual speccing the Polearm or Two-Handed style lines to be unfair considering dual speccing is not a requirement for the heavy weapon users of the other realms. Having to spend more specialization points to achieve a comparable level of damage variance is seen as a handicap to those classes that are required to dual spec.
Even the RvR TL is posting it now...
Oh and, is that a new TL report for Armsman's? If so, it looks pretty much exactly the same as the last one.

 

[Kagato.]

Originally posted by Coim-
Specific Issues: Dual Speccing
Many Albions believe the need for dual speccing the Polearm or Two-Handed style lines to be unfair considering dual speccing is not a requirement for the heavy weapon users of the other realms. Having to spend more specialization points to achieve a comparable level of damage variance is seen as a handicap to those classes that are required to dual spec.
Even the RvR TL is posting it now...
Oh and, is that a new TL report for Armsman's? If so, it looks pretty much exactly the same as the last one.

which just goes to show how long mythic have been ignoring armsman hoping we'd go away.

 

[Coim-]

Originally posted by Kagato.
which just goes to show how long mythic have been ignoring armsman hoping we'd go away.

So true. I don't think we've had a significant change since release.

 

[stupidshady]

one rly, purge and ip got cheaper but so did it for all the pure tanks :-/

 

[yurka_polearm]

Originally posted by pez
I mean complaining about armsam getting screwed by pbt and running out of end is just stupid, thats what paladins and mercs are for.

most the time only one paladin is in a rvr group and he's guarding the casters.

polearmers can use up all his end in 4/5 styles _IF_ using Poleaxe, even then all our other polearm styles use Medium amounts of endurance, apart from our defenders combo which is hardly ever pulled off in rvr unless some random tank is hitting you.

Without a pally near by or potions we can run out of endurance very quickly!

 

[gunner440]

Originally posted by ilienwyn
The official web page for armsmen built by the new TL is this: http://www.meatshield.com/

that forum is full of shit

if you really are interested and concerned about the armsman class then ignore that page completely

 

[Coim-]

I think either a bigger end pool, or some sort of battle cry for endurance wouldn't be asking too much.

 

[kirennia]

Armsman ability - Archangels gift

Increasing endurance regenration by the equivalent of 2 points in tireless and also increasing damage output by 20% for 30 seconds. 5 minute recast ability. Weapon temporarily has a golden sword effect with a golden flame


Sounds fair but the game is designed so that 2 realms of the 3 have specific abilities very avaliable to them. Or even unique abilites for certain realms which are obvious such as SoS and group purge. A sort of ability such as that stated above would be the equivalent of a morph so they probably wouldn't like that.

Examples:

Moose/rat form but nothing for albion
BoF/BAoD but nothing for midgard
insta mezz/insta stun compared to higher range mezz
skald - speed+melee, mincer - speed+melee, bard - speed+utility


The list is vast so I wont bother posting them all but the point behind my post is that it would have to be a unique ability to bring it in line with the other realms to keep the game interesting and not just the same in all 3 realms.

 

[glorien_]

The Alb RvR report was very good i must say, highlighted everything i can think of and hopefully mythic/goa will listen and take some action.

How to make the arms class better is very tricky - u cant really give them a spell as they arent really "magical" and wouldnt fit with the class.. giv styles or sumthing that leechs end from the char ure attacking?

 

[Kagato.]

Originally posted by glorien_
The Alb RvR report was very good i must say, highlighted everything i can think of and hopefully mythic/goa will listen and take some action.

How to make the arms class better is very tricky - u cant really give them a spell as they arent really "magical" and wouldnt fit with the class.. giv styles or sumthing that leechs end from the char ure attacking?

Any instant style would be nice, one that could be used once every X minutes that can be performed at any time during your usual swing speed with no endurance cost. It would also help the slow weapon vs pbt problem as they could at least pop pbt and get one hit in before the caster then no doubt sprints away out of reach.

The benefits on the style could improve slightly at key level stages like the other timered abilities.

But as Kirennia said, it needs to be something unique and preferably not RA related like the usual mythic budget fixes.

 

[gimped]

Kagato - do us all a favour. Shut the fuck up you dick..

 

[ilienwyn]

Originally posted by gunner440
that forum is full of shit

if you really are interested and concerned about the armsman class then ignore that page completely

Maybe so, but since TL reads that any good ideas should be post there. Easier to reach Mythic...

 

[stupidshady]

Originally posted by gimped
Kagato - do us all a favour. Shut the fuck up you dick..

gimped, kagato is just saying whats on his mind and I actually agree with him, so unless ya got something usefull to add to this thread just go away, or you'll hurt yourself

 

[Kagato.]

Originally posted by gimped
Kagato - do us all a favour. Shut the fuck up you dick..

Until you have something constructive to say yourself, how about you take your own advice.

And resorting to personal insults in a response to an innocent post with nothing negative in it at all aimed at anyone is just sad.

 

[Fagane]

Originally posted by gimped
Kagato - do us all a favour. Shut the fuck up you dick..

gimped, you are even more sad than Glottis, where Glottis has an oppinion that is often coverd up with flames, you actualy have compleetly nothing to say, except randomly insulting people.

That makes you not only a disgusting little small dick twit, it also makes you nothing more then a pre-teen with his balls besides him getting mixed with your left over brains in a fine-cutter for some bavarge you hope to get some kind of ego-trip from.

On an other note:

While I disagre with the pbt problem (an earth theurg, warden only good group ability, and already screwed over by assassins and archers, and useless if people /assist) I think the armsman could use an update on the dual spec-lines, but I was more thinking in the line that an armsman can use all styles from his 2e spec line as well as the first with his weapon.

Fagane

 

[ReaLX]

Originally posted by Fagane
but I was more thinking in the line that an armsman can use all styles from his 2e spec line as well as the first with his weapon.

U mean being able to use thrust spec line styles with a thrust polearm as weapon ? Or slash styles with a 2 handed sword ? That would be nice I think

 

[stupidshady]

hhmm, I dunno, prob will still get same dam then ? because thats the problem, we are losin our dam because we have to duell spec :-/

 

[Kagato.]

I wouldn't actually mind the dual spec if it did as you would expect, reduced damage variance to zero.

With 50 pole/2H and 50 T/S/C you would expect there to be no damage variance at all, yet we still get huge variance. If they just fixed it so we got the proper damage with no variance or at least negligible variance i'd be a whole lot happier. Though there would still be plenty of other Armsman specific issues in need of addressing as well.

The suggested Endurance shout is an ok idea, and sometime ago would of been a fairly powerful ability, but since all realms have access to some form of fairly common End regen ability and the access to potions, its not really as good as it might once of been by itself. Its a tricky topic to balance without becoming over powered or mimicing some other ability.

Key things i'd like addressed are (unashamedly from the point of view of a pure poler) :

Poleaxe style having its endurance cost reduced to either low, or medium cost with medium to hit bonus. This would mean we no longer have to use a pitifully low level style, and can have a reasonable damage anytime style finally. (before you whine yes I know all weapon styles have issues, im only quoting this one as it effects polers).

Defenders Aegis is an ok style but for a level 50 style its still not great, I find that Phalanx which it chains off often out damages it, and whilst the snare is nice and long, with a slow polearm by the time you get to your second swing to land it, the little blighter is already well out of range. This would be much more useful if they changed it to Back positional itself, you still have the same Rear restriction on it, but no longer have to wait 11 seconds to land it.

Dual Spec : As suggested above, if theres no easy way to get round it, at least let it do what its meant to do and give use proper damage award for the costs we're paying.

Armsman themselves : Endurance shout/instant style, temp absorb or resitance buff shout? theres plenty of ideas around, I personally like the style idea as no matter what spec armsman you are it will be useful and the damage will be relative to the weapon your using and few could argue its over powered, it wouldn't even hurt if the style had a stun element, seeing as polearms are one of the few lines with a stun you cannot use on anything but another melee spec class, and on hybrids, if you've already used slam there immunity is up regardless.

I don't think Armsman are as bad as the TL makes out, I certainly disagree with what he says about them being beat regular by every other melee class, but there are issues that need looked at, as in the bigger group based picture we do now offer alot less in rvr then we used to.