f13.net

I know that sounds lame, but this is what's happening on my server. Ever since that stealth raid on the Capital City and Mythic's adjustment, the norm now is for the other side to:

If they don't hold any Keeps and BFO's (meaning we own the zone).

1. Not queue for scenarios that give VP's
2. Don't show up to defend, and not give VP's
3. Don't take keeps back because losing them gives VP's

Doing PQ's in the zone didn't seem to move zone control at all. The only time the bar moved was if there was RVR or a scenario for VP's. Once the Destruction side figured out they couldn't win, they abandoned all efforts completely and Chaos Wastes was stuck in a "contested" state all weekend. Without VP's or PQ's to move the bar, we're in limbo.

Then there was some bug on the Chaos Wastes Everchosen shrine where it constantly respawned Destruction NPC's, and would be capped back to Destruction if we left it.

I understand the need to slow the game down some based on the ninja cap city raids from a couple weeks ago, but if things stay like this then the other side can just abandon the zone and hold us there forever.

Anyone else having that happen?

So is this a "The only way to win is not to fight.  How about a game of chess?" problem?

Yeah every time they realize they can't win, they abandon all activities that would give us VP's to take the zone. Its like trying to play a 2 player game without the other player, and the game won't start until Player 2 signs up.

Based on current trends, your post was 1/3 the size it should have been and it made sense.

Do it again.

I don't know if it is the same cause... but the effect for the last 72 hours has been the same on Ostermark.  We held all T4 keeps/BOs that we could take in Dwarf lands for 72 hours and the ownership bar did not budge.  If this is what they mean by "slowing it down" then I think perhaps they went overboard the other direction.

Yeah that's what I mean. We owned everything, and since they couldn't beat us they simply refused to take keeps/BFO's back, stopped queuing the scenarios that would give VP's, and without PQ's to move the bar there was no way to flip the zone ownership to our side.

We'll show up to fight, win or lose, and so zones will change hands if they push into Order areas. But when we have them on the run, they won't show and we get stuck unless PQ's can go back to helping to flip the zone.

VP for PQ,Scenerios, spill over, and quests should be expressed as a percentage of VP for RvR.  +100% for scenarios, +50% for PQ, +30% for quests +20 for spill over.  That way hiding from RvR is no longer effective since +200% to zero is still zero.

Do you know if this is a concerted effort on the part of your enemies or is it just because they get all demotivated and don't bother to play defense?

My guess is that its not happening. It is an illusion caused by having 1000 people playing one side wanting to fight a couple of hundred people on the other side. City raids that took place early and the one month subscription period have probably caused some attrition that is making seem more pronounced. On our server, most of Destruction is of the opinion that Order are 'not playing' or are 'care bears who won't RvR' when Order are the guys who are in some form of RvR all the time. The problem is, we can only keep about one quarter of them engaged at any given time, so the majority are of the opinion that we're quitters.

In general, I'm having a hard time understanding why and when things happen, whether it's scenario queues, zone control, and so on. I can't tell when it's "Order is doing something organized (or refusing to do it) that is having an impact" and when it is "The game is not registering what people on both sides are doing properly or in a way that makes sense". I'm still convinced that scenario queues sometimes get bugged, for example.

This here is a great example of where Mythic's philosophy of beta testing completely falls on its face.  

There is one huge Destruction guild (Goons) on our server that have 1,200 people spread across 4 guild tags, and then a few other guilds that range in size from 50-100.  Before the zone control changes we'd have battles in Chaos Wastes with like 200 vs 200+ fairly regularly. But now when we push into their zones and they lose Keeps and BFO's, its a pretty organized effort to stay out of RVR/Scenarios. A few random Destruction will queue for Maw, but then stop after getting blown up by Order premades.

In the past we'd have people guarding BFO's, Keeps, grinding PQ's, and then have RVR/Scenario PVP going on all at the same time. They knew that if they didn't show up, we could still flip the zone so they would fight. Now they know we can't flip the zone without actual PVP contributions, so its easier for them to Boycott and then use that death/rez trick to slowly move the zone back to their side in off peak times.

Hello,
I'm a new poster here from the Skull Throne server and I just wanted to share an experience that we recently had with attempting to take T4 zones since the "fix" that was put in a few days ago. At the moment I do not believe it is possible to take a t4 zone. Over the coarse of 5-6 hours we had every keep and objective locked down. We also were winning about 2 out of every 3 scenario's which were poping up quite offten. Along side that we had at least 4 groups fully farming PQ's, and there was a good amount of open RvR happening. On top of all of that we also owned T3 in that warfront which should have given us another chunk of contribution towards our VP. We got the zone about 3/4's of the way to captured status but we were entirely unable to move it any further then that. Since the patch that slowed down t4 progression I haven't been able to find proof of any server moving the warfront to the next zone which makes me believe that they simply have slowed the progression to a point were if anything it would take a one sided murder fest to flip a zone.

- Erdrick

Actually this sort of "stalemate" condition was a known issue in Beta, though it was typically because one side had the numbers advantage so it had all the BOs but the other side was winning enough of the scenarios to keep the zone from flipping.

PQ's need to be put back in to help flip the zone. There is no reason the other faction can simply give up, go PVE, and forget about RVR like this while the other side has 300 people in the zone with no way to capture it.

Honestly, I have a hard time thinking of any fix for this problem that wouldn't make it pretty effortless for one side on a highly imbalanced server to easily maintain control. Earlier, a lot of servers were complaining of problems where order was unable to cap higher zones simply due to the large number of destro doing pq's and such in the lower ones.

No, they don't need to "put back PQs" because the old system was fucked too. They need a system that rewards RvR and which awards capture accomplishments, not simply the largest side involved.

Without PQ's contributing something, even if its small, how do you flip a zone then when the other side makes a willing and coordinated effort to avoid PVP in that zone and you can't get VP's? You get stuck at 75% is what.

I forget if it was in a chat or during beta but one of the devs said that they were going to implement a system that prevented the one side from not fighting. The basic premis was and don't quote me on this "if one side has all of the objectives and is queued up for scenario's but the other side doesn't, after about an hour the zone will flip." Sadly I haven't seen anything to support this but at least there is an intent to fix this problem.

If zone control is dictated by owning the keeps and battlefield objectives, it doesn't matter (to you) if the other side doesn't fight back. You get zone control.

Essentially, if you own the keeps and BOs, the slider should start moving in your direction until somebody does something about it by taking them. Making it an "RvR" game about completing public quests is a fucking joke. Do you really want to play THAT game?

What I was getting at is that they didn't do anything about it.

Nah I'd be cool with it if zone control was determined by who owned Keeps and BFO's.

This reminds me of whatever online football game that let one player pause the game indefinitely. So, if one side was losing, they'd just pause the game and wait for the other player to give up in order not to mar their record.

Again, amazed at how much Mythic appear to not know about their players.

They could do this funky mathematical concept called normalization.  Where any contribution is weighted against the total population.  Numbers are hard though, so I'm not expecting it.

Coupled with the other suggestions, it might just work.

It's as if Mythic is trying so hard to emulate WoW that they forgot about all of the things they learned from DAoC.   Sure, I appreciate the new mechanics that they're attempting to introduce, but many seem so ham-handed in implementation. 

1) Defense should be easier than offense.  This allows for realm imbalances in that a small number of defenders can stave off large numbers of attackers.  The small defense groups are rewarded by high kill rates.  Unfortunately this setup creates a downward spiral when the overpopulated realm takes the difficult objectives (the lower population realm is unable to EVER reclaim lost areas). Lantyssa's suggestion of normalization may be helpful here, but I can't think of an easy way to implement it without it being readily exploitable. 

2) Rewards for success should not cripple the opposing side.  Taking of all relics in DAoC gave such a HUGE advantage that getting them back became quite difficult, especially in cases where there accompanied realm imbalances.

3) Class imbalances should be minimized during large scale or seige situations.  Some classes are better geared to open field tactics while others excell while stationary.  It's crucial that class balance be maintained for both field and seige situations

4) Allow things to change hands easily.  Zone changes should be able to occur nightly.  Make this process too hard and players stop feeling the impact of their actions.  Of course, trivializing this makes the effort seem pointless after a while.  Balance is going to be difficult and likely take time to perfect.

I've been playing the game for about two weeks now and have absolutely zero idea how RvR works or whether I'm having any impact, ever, on anything other than my own characters progress.  If there is any obvious notification that anything I do contributes in any way to the PvP metagame . . . I've missed it.  I come from a EQ, WoW, L2 background. Warhammer has the least intuitive PvP system I've ever experienced.  For a PvP game, that's very very bad.

That's true.  Now that I think of it, I have no idea when I'm contributing except in the major cities, because it tells me I have contributed towards raising their rank.

Now that you mention it, I did once kill an otherwise completely unnotable mob where I was informed that I'd contributed VP to my realm (or possibly Altdorf, I can't remember).

Almost certainly "you have helped towards increasing the rank of Altdorf" - I've killed mobs where it results that message. Victory points, and even the rate or direction of control in a zone are completely hidden. I've mentioned before that you should be able to mouse over the zone control display and see something like "Destruction will gain control of this zone in 2 hours and 15 minutes" based on the current rate of change. That way, when you take a keep, you know how long you have to defend to get the zone capture. Otherwise, people just bugger off and go chase XP in Tor Anroc (or whatever your current tier's FOTS scenario is).

The same situation happened in my server(Darklands - largest Oceanic server). Every Order guild has either stopped playing RvR in T4/rerolled/quit game.

After almost two weeks of zero RvR actions in T4, the top guild on Dest. decided to move over to Order. To do so, we deleted our Rank/RR 40 characters, gave away the 5000 gold in guild vault. It was a hard decision for everyone, but something has to be done.

 

Ah, yes, I remember this well from my DAoC days. My underpopulated realm was given every reason EXCEPT pure population as to why we were always "losing." Lost all our keeps and the relic we took four hours before because Hibernia has more 50's in our frontier than our entire realm has logged in at ALL? We just need better leadership.

That's like 3 servers with similar issues just in this thread, and there's a long multiple page post over on the Vault with people from other servers. Considering how fast they "fixed it" when they thought it was too fast, I sure hope they can do something about this stalemate issue this week.

It's the same situation on Monolith. We had every keep and objective in Dragonwake for a good 7 hours, and were winning scenarios until they stopped queuing. We waited until 3am, before we decided to give up and get sleep. I logged in today at 11:30, and destruction took everything back when we logged.

While there is a lot of asshats in this thread, there's some good information in it also;
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143425

Why are these equations so cryptic?  It doesn't make any sense to me.. We're going to figure out how to game your system in a week anyway, quit trying to be so secretive.

Also, I'm a lurker from 2005.. check my profile... (please don't ban me)

Its like the Spanish inquisition over here.

It's saying something that it got this guy out of the shadows after a 3 year lurk. Impressive! And he didn't even address this to MARK!

You, sir, are nowhere near ban-worthy!

Hold on.. I'm still writing a three page thesis that will start with MARK MARK LOOK OVER HERE MARK LOOK AT ME :why_so_serious:

We might just keep you.  :awesome_for_real:

Well played, sir. Well played.  :heart:

It took CRS 5 years or so to balance the sides in WW2OL to allow the Allies to start winning at pretty much 50% of the time, and that's long after many 1000's of allied players quit in disgust. Having 3 years of being told by *CRS* it was lack of leadership and superior tactics and strategy didn't help either.

One thing puzzles me though: it sounds like different servers have *both* sides being able to engage easy-mode depending on the server population: am I correct in thinking that both order AND chaos have the numbers advantage on different servers? If so, I don't understand what's making the difference?

That is true.

On the other side on my server (darklands) we had some pretty epic t3 battles last week and it was great. 

Wondering how much of the t4 problems is all the people that rushed there are impatient for the rest of us to catch up.

Its more a matter of the change between T3 and T4.  In T3 if you capture all the BOs and Keeps in a pairing then you will get a nifty little message that says, "Order now controls yada yada."  It comes with a RP bonus and a full morale bar and a buff I think.  This happens on a regular basis on our server as T3 lands change hands quite often.

In T4, however, it has been the case that Both sides have held an entire zone for more than 24 hours and not seen it unlock anything or even more over to full control.  In our case we waited almost 3 days with complete control over Thunder Mountain and... nothing.  Perhaps it IS just a population thing, but that would not be true on the servers where their T4 population numbers in the thousands.  I think something just got over-fixed.

This is happening on our server too.

We're Order side, as a server the population on Order side has levelled a lot slower than the norm and Destruction has the numbers advantage by a long way. We've around 20-30 people who can participate in T4 including a big batch of low 30's. For the last two weeks the map has been blue and the only oRvR that happens is the odd BO flipping and that's about it.

Pretty disappointing all round, the response we get from the people we know are hiding behind their warcamps is that they'll come out when they're ready. So we're back to patrolling and levelling up in the dull PvE grind.

All they have to do to keep the zones flipping over is take a couple of BO's every night and it seems to take forever to flip over =/

Lame.

One of the things which I hadn't considered but which has been nice for RvR has been the addition of regional chat.  Normally I just switch it off (WARE IS MANKIRKS WIFE LOL etc.) but now there's actually some organization going on there in T1/T2 on the servers I play on, rather than just wandering groups occasionally bumping into each other.  Order has actually taken over the zones a number of times, which almost never happened before.

My guild took T4 keeps at darkland last night. I think around 4 of them. Ghost town.

Well if anyone sees any updates from Mythic about how they are going to address this, please drop a link. I think its obvious from this thread that this is more than a coincidence, and if the opposing realm isn't going to show up to provide us with more VP's to flip zone control then something has to be done sooner rather than later. Right now it makes no sense to bother with BFO/Keep capturing when the other side can simply boycott, and leave you with a permanent stalemate.

What guild did you move to?

Messed around with local guild. There were some RVR going at peak hour. Something that I never get to play around in Ulthuan cause it's not my local time server, I soloed most of the time in Ulthuan cause I had no choice.

Just got on skull throne a few minutes ago to see that they now own Praag. I have no idea how they took it but I guess it is still technically possible to take a zone.

Yep, dunno if there was a stealth patch or what, but it took us about 10-15 minutes after capping all of Thunder Mountain to open up Black Crag (Dwarf Tier) tonight.  We took all the BO/Keeps in the Crag and still had a good ways to go to push that one to flip when we called it a night.  But, at least we see that it is possible... we are just not entirely sure what we did differently this time.  We had people running PQs and maybe 5-6 scenarios popped all night, none of them were "dwarf" scenarios though.

I really laugh when people expect me to believe someone organized a boycott or whatever in an MMOG. You can't even organize a 5 man pickup group most times.

Possibly off-topic question:

Tonight I was running through some T2 scenarios as Destruction, and a few times, right before the end of the match timer, Order dropped about 2/3 of their players and we got the "Scenario is unbalanced, closing in 60 sec" message.  Thing is, we still won the matches, since they dropped with like ten seconds left on the clock.

I'm wondering why someone would do this; is it some kind of weird Victory Point thing?  As far as I know, win or lose, you still get a whack of XP at the end of the match, and I can't think of a reason to play for 14m50s and then drop out in the last ten seconds.  Anyone know?

Probably just dumping so they can quickly queue for the next one.

Probably to avoid leveling out of the sweet spot at the end of a tier.

They won't get the XP if they quit a scenario early? I never bothered watching but had assumed you gained all the XP you're gonna gain from just killing players at all.

Right, I think you get the XP gathered during the fight for the kills but you dont get the bonus xp for finishing the scenario.

Ok that makes sense then.

This is similar to another thread here where people informed me this same practice happens in WoW BGs (not the XP part but the sitting-at-tier-cap part). Same question applies: why do people do this? Are they farming Realm Rank in the low tiers because the pickins are easier (lower levels with fewer/lesser abilities)? I can't see the answer being "for fun" because for the type of people that do this I gotta imagine that eventually runs dry in a week or so...

Heck maybe they just like being the top dog in the scenario, there are drops and such so there are rewards for farming scenarios.  The difference is that in WoW BGs give no xp so once you cap the tier you can stay forever.  In WAR they will eventually out level the tier and become bottom fish again, but probably well equipped bottom fish who have a ton of hours playing together so they will be able to zoom up to the top of the tier and squat there again.  Not my idea of fun but I can understand the attraction.

The negative side effects of a side boycotting PvP are absolutely huge.  Not only does this prevent you from capturing a zone, it basically turns the game off as they refuse to queue for scenarios.  If there is no other side there is no game.

I think a good way to handle it would be have the system work as it does now, except holding most of a zone should generate victory points.  For example if you hold both keeps you start getting VPs and the longer you get them the higher the rate at which you get VPs goes.  If they can grind scenarios or something to match it, fine.  However, the longer a side has dominance over the open rvr zone the harder it will become to match until it becomes impossible and they take the zone.  You could even pause the point generation if they attack a keep.

Also being on this server, they literally stop participating in all forms of PvP post T2.  It will hopefully improve as the masses start hitting t3 and t4.  However, at the moment if you want to PvP this forces you to reroll and go back to T1.  They simply cut off all your methods to generate VPs by refusing to participate.

Hades, you consider coddling the goons?  Send them nice cards with rainbows and unicorns on them saying "nice try" after you destroy them.

This is the same issue on our server. I tried out t4  last night.  Boy taking out all the keeps and BO in t4 is surprisingly boring with no opposition.  It feels strange because taking a BO in T3 can easlly get a full wb in response.

/hug them before they release for the achievement unlock. Oh wait, wrong game.

Speaking as someone on the other side who is here for the PvP, it's pretty much lack of people / apathy. It's mind boggling that the goons of all people would have numbers issues, but every time someone tries to get a T4 warband going, it breaks up after a single loss, if it even gets anywhere at all.

I honestly think that most of the goons just don't like PvP.

I'm really hoping mythic realizes the current system makes no sense, and just makes victory points a straight bonus over time for holding BOs/Keeps. Some of us want the zones to cap as much as you guys do, since a fortress fight is the only thing that will get people out of bastion or off their alts.

Friend of mine actually mentioned that they tried to intentionally *lose* a zone to you guys today, by stripping naked and suiciding, but it ended up having the opposite effect? (VP *increased* by suiciding) This is second hand, hades would know about it more than I would.

i left open rvr when it gets too laggy for a tank to do anything. but usually my server dragonwake and praag is pretty active. Thunder mountain is a ghost town however. Overall I think both sides are not making any gain towards the end game capital siege.

Mythic plan of playing both sides to cockblock each other from the end game is definitely working, cause I don't see any variation except constant cap and recap. When you see 20 guys defending a keep, it's best to walk off rather than donate RP to them. You'd need at least 3-4x the numbers just to break down the first gate. And there's no way you can take out the Keep Lord with 3-4 BW just DoTTing our tanks like crazy.

You know it's bad when two full warbands are running around T4 capping stuff, and one is following 20 minutes behind the other just to recap as they go.

By the way, does anyone else feel like the lack of oomph with the siege weps are a big reason why attackers can't do shit if five lowbies show up?

Or am I the only one who feels frustration that my big ass ballista can't peg motherfuckers to the wall when I hit them?

well on my server they do definitely fight each other nightly on most T4 spots for zone control. but as i;ve said, none could lock it down. not enough scenarios pop up and weekday keep defense is just not gonna sustain itself. Some attacker siege equipment pads are placed too far from the wall, preventing it from helping much. They really need to buff the attacker siege weaponry imo. Overall, I just leave when there's a lack of direction going on. Just random street gankings of 20 v 20 catching random stragglers while trying to ninja BO was fun for 20 mins, after that; not so much.

Last night we were taking back keeps in Dark Crag. I won 1st in contribution, and then placed 12th in the roll. A random pug who tagged along won the awesome bag, and after that we all said fuck it and went to PVE. Without players to fight against in scenarios or keep taking, zones aren't flipping so RVR has become a snore fest.  The Goons running around naked was interesting, but in the grand scheme of things other things were going on that simply weren't feeding VP's to the Order side.

Honestly I feel that Order has so much stacked against it in PVP class balance (as in no one plays Engineers, Archmages aren't fun to play), zones that won't flip, Destruction can somehow take back zones without fighting, etc that many people are losing the will to play this game much sooner than what we saw in AOC.  I think after WotlK releases population imbalances are going to get even worse, and without players to fight it all just creates a fast downward spiral.

Engineers suck to solo with.  The turret won't hold aggro, but half your abilities have a five foot minimum range.  While I've never gotten kicked from a group with mine, I can't imagine any other class being so useless when one could get just about anything else, at least in the early levels.  In large scale battles I have done well, but the day-to-day is where you level, and they simply aren't worth playing there.

This happened to our guild, and lot of people have left. We picked order to try and have a challenge, little did we know developers and the game in general would be working their hardest at every corner to screw us over.

I'm sorry. What? Class by Class comparison suggests Order is superior when it comes to Ranged engagement versus Destruction melee-centric classes. The problem starts for Destro when the close combatants couldn't get close or unable to coordinate a charge. Which happens 75% of the time in scenario hence my friend quitting. He got tired of being laughed at for charging in first on his Chosen and dying alone while the rest of the melee just stood behind the healer like retards, letting the Bright Wizards Tab-DoT away to 250k dmg. If it's a matter of organized RvR, guess who has easier time organizing it? Definitely the side with Range and when they're defending a keep, good luck in taking it. We'll just get dps'ed to hell. The only thing Order has against them is class appeal, not statistics; hence the population imbalance.

Shadow Warrior vs Marauder : We know how that happens in the trailer. Marauder is easier to level but who gives a shit. More or less equal in their given role.
Engineer vs Magus : After the fix on the Rift pull, Magus is no longer special. With his demon being gimp, Engineers have better survivability and better pets in RvR.
Ironbreaker vs Blackguard : N/A. but IB is raping face (See: Chosen)
Swordmaster vs Black Orc : Orc advantage here being able to heal in combat but Swordmasters are hard to kill too. Not very clear winner.
Gryphon Knight vs Chosen : N/A. but Chosen aura doesn't really give much in RvR yet, needs clearer role. Attack landing that is determined by INT for a tank = disrupts. No good.
Witch Hunter vs Witch Elf : One has a ranged finisher, the other has melee proc attacks. Witch Elf melee superiority here, but you can't run from a Witch Hunter.
Bright Wizard vs Sorc: In terms of efficiency, the BW rape faces with so many instant attacks going for them, Sorc needs time to cast and hence more vulnerable to focus fire when poppin out to cast. The BW has little problem. Pop in , Dot DoT Detonate, pop out. Grats 2k Dmg to a grp in 3 second cast.

Order, at least on our server, isn't seeing a lot of people play Engineer, Archmage, White Lions, or Shadow Warriors. People are rolling IB's, Runepriests, Swordmasters, Warrior Priests, and Witch Hunters. Those three classes aren't popular for whatever reason.

PVP consists of warbands with 2 marauders and 2 maguses per group, and here's what happens.

Magnus 1 uses rift summon, which even nerfed, pulls 9 people. Then Maurauder (i believe, if I remember from when I played) uses AOE knockdown, cone damage attk, and sorcs AOE nuke. Whoever lives is then pulled to the next magus, rinse repeat. A full warband can be wiped out in under 2 minutes just getting yanked from one magnus to the other.

This is fairly standard PVP right now for the Destructo side, and unless Order has more of an incentive to level up engineers, archmages, white lions, and shadow warriors then yeah its pretty unbalanced. I won't say every server has this problem, but its certainly one our server has.

Shadow Warriors are boring to level. They can do fairly well in PvP, but in PvE it is a matter of repeating ranged attack -> ranged DPS -> maybe a snare, maybe a moving ranged attack -> melee DPS -> melee strike until death over and over again.

And god help you if you run into more than two enemies. Shadow Warriors are meant to be a class that is benefited by moving, but in PvE it is incredibly easy to move into aggro range of another mob by accident. With a lack of AoE melee attacks (at least for the first half of progression - later on you get more AoE ranged which would benefit PvP but not PvE again) and only one snare and one AoE root, it's not hard to die very quickly with a Shadow Warrior in PvE when facing more than one opponent.

Also, stance dancing can be complex and it can be easy to feel that Shadow Warriors don't have enough spike damage at range to take down a target and are then easy pickings in melee range.

well that's all down to people's preferences and class balance had nothing to do with that. It's more a 'population issue' in regards to how RvR plays out end game. I agree though, that magnet pull shit needs to be lessened. It's just too critical in massive RvR. 9 isolated targets for everyone to melee lemonparty focusfire orgy is too much.

Swordmaster: Debuffs Black Orc's Spirit resist to 0.  Uses Ensorcelled Blow (tactic which adds DoT a plus), Gust/Parry (forget the ability), Dragon Talon/Wrath of Hoeth.  Swordmaster wins by using almost all spirit damage which the opponent has no mitigation to after being debuffed by Wrath of Hoeth.

In PvP I use a shield, the Ensorcelled tactic, and Rugged tactic which bumps up my Toughness.  I will win against any other tank one-on-one.

That's my build at 25 as well. Ensorcelled Agony and +96 toughness. All mastery in Hoeth. Cuts up other melee pretty good.

uh. Wot Armor kthx, and i'm not having a 1 v 1 comparison here. in terms of grp support and front line tanker, Black Orc is supreme. Have you seen their mastery skill tree? So much better than Elves selfish buffs. And the orc's in combat heal hits around 1k at end game. Compared to our Phantom Blade & LolProtectionfoHoeth, that is really amazing.

So what you're saying is Destro fine, nerf Order... except for Swordmasters, who are gimp. And you're now playing Destro, but used to play a Swordmaster? Seems pretty suspect. I'd agree with the BW vs. Sorc at least in scenario play. You're grossly understating the WE vs. WH however. WE own at melee, and that's their role. Comparing Marauder vs. Shadow Warrior isn't valid - SW are not a melee class, that would be White Lion. Substituting solid non-positional burst melee for a ranged snare and having a broken pathing pet makes Order's melee very weak. Shadow Warrior should be compared against Squig Herder, which they've got the win on. Also missing out the healing classes helps your case - because Destro have the better RvR healers overall. Only in Runepriest vs. Zealot does Order win out, and that's in an organised group. Solo or in a disorganised rabble, Zealot plays better.

The solid wins for Order are Bright Wizards, Shadow Warrior and Ironbreakers (assuming we compare them against the non-equivalent Chosen). And Runepriests in a coherent group. Solid wins for Destro are Shaman, DoKs, WE, Marauder and Black Orc. Magus vs. Engineer is pretty much a tie.

No matter how they play out in either solo or group play, the fact of the matter is that Order are going to do best in any class balance changes. Because fewer people are playing Order.

Swordmasters aren't totally gimp I never even implied that, but their mastery needs reworking, at the current state their utility tree is just too good compared to their 2 hand dps tree. Black orcs are more or less able to spec on each tree and have a decent role played out for them. It's a no brainer, Swordmaster is not a finished class at the moment.

How often is the Black Orc heal up?  I have 4000 health at 24, so a 1000 point heal at endgame doesn't seem like a whole lot unless it's on a five second cooldown, especially when none of the damage I am doing is being mitigated.  Against someone without Spirit damage, yeah, Black Orcs are tough.  I don't like fighting them on other characters.  Or love them when I'm on my Disciple.

Da Toughest procs once every ten seconds provided you keep hitting things. Every time it procs you get a boost to your health and a heal for an equal amount. If you were to spec your Black Orc with full points in Path Of Da Toughest (which most don't) the benefit would be greater.

Unfortunately I think Mythic might disagree with you.

Unfortunately, Mark Jacobs said 1.1 will change classes.

I think he used the words "tough love". You can't hurt the things you love, right?

On Azazel, Order has held every single BO and all keeps for more than 2 weeks now... and we haven't locked a single zone. Well, we did lock Black Craig but we lost the zone somehow (we lost the zone while holding all BOs and keeps, lol).

Very frustrating to say the least. And destruction won't fight us open rvr, the barely fight us in scenarios. At many times we're playing a pvp game with no pvp. The LEAST Mythic could allow us to do is take some attempts at some fortresses while we're waiting for Destruction to participate. Destruction have even told us that there is no point in participating, because nothing is on the line (too difficult to take zones, fort lords buffed too much) and that they are going to grind PVE until it changes.

So does anyone know how to take a zone? From what I understand you need victory points from PQs, objectives, and scenarios to do it, but you need all three. So is the best way to do it, grind PQs in the zone for 1 hour while queueing up for scenarios in that zone (that destro won't play) while holding all of the objectives in the area? Does this board have an expert on zone flips?

The main reason you're probably not seeing many white lions is the lion is pants-on-head retarded. They aren't completely unplayable like they were during the beta as a result, but I can definitely understand people going "fuck this" by level 5 or so and rolling a class that they don't have to depend on a completely idiotic AI so much.

I have to think that Mythic will see the lack of oRvR at end game and they will have to fix it.   The only thing that might be delaying them now is the fact that not many people have made it to end game.

I also think that if a lot of people are rerolling alts and not fighting through t3 and t4 then Mythic will have to do something to fix it.

I have to think they won't just watch as their game implodes, the only question is how long will they wait.

Whew, too much thinking ...

Change will continue to come slowly as long as people continue to subscribe to shitty games.  You really want change?  Cancel your sub until you see change.  The only way to get dev houses to listen is by voting with your wallet. 

... and go play something that isn't WoW. Go off and play an indy, experience something different. It is ridiculous that players go, "We want something other than WoW!" when they return to it time and time and time again.