O
old.Wildfire
Guest
Crowd Control - if after reading those two words you're still reading this post, I'm impressed, because I probably wouldn't be. CC imbalance comes up on SO MANY threads, I'm sick of it. What's the truth? From my experience, this:
Recently FC have been having some very good sessions in the gorge, in odins, and in sauvage. Some of our gorge sessions unfortunately get too good and as soon as we kill one group, we're immedietly pounced on out of nowhere by their 3fg of friends, and have to start again back at APK. What I have noticed though, is that in a head-on encounter with another fg of hibs (or mids, this applies just as well) neither of the other realms really has much of an advantage over albs.
If you know how to play well (I won't claim that I do, merely that I play with people who seem to), there are a number of things that people always allocate themselves to doing as you engage an enemy group. Wizards QC-bolt the enemy mezzer (it actually hits them before they can mezz because of the huge range) and immedietly start laying into the first caster they see, tanks will charge headlong at any obvious wardens/runies to eliminate the PBT, and assassins will make a beeline for enemy casters. Any CC that we usually have tends to hang back to cover our casters from enemy tanks. Whether we have a mezzer or not, if people do these things, albs really can match up just fine to the other realms in encounters like this. I'm sure this is pretty-much the same routine that other realms follow, but this is just an alb perspective. I should add that we rarely have a sorcerer with us, and thus the kamikaze cloth wearer tactic isn't often an option.
Crowd control is very important. If you run into an enemy group sleeping, it CAN mean that the fight is over before it starts. However with purge, IP e.t.c. the domination of AE mezz is not quite what it used to be, and a group can occasionally recover if a few people purge and do intelligent things. Crowd control WILL win zerg fights though. By this I mean fights (often at milegates) between >3fg's of unconnected players on each side. My belief is that this is because crowd control in this situation allows for accute attrition - with good CC, you can turn a fight into dozens of active players on one side against only a handful on the other. In these situations, CC really is what matters most, and yes, it's where the "balancing issues" (no I'm not going to go into them and would appreciate if others didn't on this post either) of the three realms become evident.
A pessimist would say that mythic have been "stupid" in their design of the game. Perhaps they were. I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps, however, mythic were optimistic. Perhaps they envisaged more players moving in groups. Perhaps you will see more splinter group action once the game really settles down into the stage of its life where the majority of its' players know how to RvR properly*.
In summary: Crowd control is only a big issue in zerg warfare. In an 8v8 situation, the group that is more organised and prepared will win every time.
It's early morning, it was something I was thinking about earlier, I felt like posting. This is the result. Opinions welcome.
* While the "original level 50's" may be petering out, the real core of each realm has still not quite finished forming - this happens in all games - notorious and successful players / guilds are established, "pecking orders" are subconciously developed e.t.c. - we haven't got there quite yet.
Recently FC have been having some very good sessions in the gorge, in odins, and in sauvage. Some of our gorge sessions unfortunately get too good and as soon as we kill one group, we're immedietly pounced on out of nowhere by their 3fg of friends, and have to start again back at APK. What I have noticed though, is that in a head-on encounter with another fg of hibs (or mids, this applies just as well) neither of the other realms really has much of an advantage over albs.
If you know how to play well (I won't claim that I do, merely that I play with people who seem to), there are a number of things that people always allocate themselves to doing as you engage an enemy group. Wizards QC-bolt the enemy mezzer (it actually hits them before they can mezz because of the huge range) and immedietly start laying into the first caster they see, tanks will charge headlong at any obvious wardens/runies to eliminate the PBT, and assassins will make a beeline for enemy casters. Any CC that we usually have tends to hang back to cover our casters from enemy tanks. Whether we have a mezzer or not, if people do these things, albs really can match up just fine to the other realms in encounters like this. I'm sure this is pretty-much the same routine that other realms follow, but this is just an alb perspective. I should add that we rarely have a sorcerer with us, and thus the kamikaze cloth wearer tactic isn't often an option.
Crowd control is very important. If you run into an enemy group sleeping, it CAN mean that the fight is over before it starts. However with purge, IP e.t.c. the domination of AE mezz is not quite what it used to be, and a group can occasionally recover if a few people purge and do intelligent things. Crowd control WILL win zerg fights though. By this I mean fights (often at milegates) between >3fg's of unconnected players on each side. My belief is that this is because crowd control in this situation allows for accute attrition - with good CC, you can turn a fight into dozens of active players on one side against only a handful on the other. In these situations, CC really is what matters most, and yes, it's where the "balancing issues" (no I'm not going to go into them and would appreciate if others didn't on this post either) of the three realms become evident.
A pessimist would say that mythic have been "stupid" in their design of the game. Perhaps they were. I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps, however, mythic were optimistic. Perhaps they envisaged more players moving in groups. Perhaps you will see more splinter group action once the game really settles down into the stage of its life where the majority of its' players know how to RvR properly*.
In summary: Crowd control is only a big issue in zerg warfare. In an 8v8 situation, the group that is more organised and prepared will win every time.
It's early morning, it was something I was thinking about earlier, I felt like posting. This is the result. Opinions welcome.
* While the "original level 50's" may be petering out, the real core of each realm has still not quite finished forming - this happens in all games - notorious and successful players / guilds are established, "pecking orders" are subconciously developed e.t.c. - we haven't got there quite yet.
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