no you can't run any good debuff option in albion.
- first thing to say about that is that you need one debuff and everyone has to be able to join on that single debuff to be competitive. debuffing two damage types is not competitive,
I disagree, all realms to some extent need to double debuff (purely optional).
Hibernia seems to be in the best place to utilize the single debuff standard debuff trains
Heat/Energy trains are in a greater space and fits in perfectly with the Hibernian Mauler on both stances.
- Animists have Matter/Body bombers, but can easily fall back on baseline energy lifetap
- Valewalkers can fit on either of the standard debuff trains (acuity buff effects them unlike their heretic/thane counterparts)
Albion has the most debuff options, althought the matter train is really hard to make work with everyones views on the status quo.
@Jak
that happens if you try to join a discussion without fact based arguments...
@Staticc
come on... you can pet or nuke at a time, that is a fact. you can follow up on some pets with some nukes, but you still do not do damage with this and if time runs out, you have zero pets out and no pressure on the enemey group anymore. that's the moment when you are loosing the game for your group...
it does not matter if you have a dd in all lines. if you can not make real use out of it. nukeing for 3xx on purple resistances is nothing that i would call useful. sure you can kill someone sometimes with that, but it's horrible in compare to a real dps caster.
sure there are necromancer debuffs, that are low delve in compare and require the necromancer to be in melee range on the target that your backline faces. which is ... you could also argument to use legendary weapons on all of the melees to debuff or use legendary staffs with debuff charges. also that sorc debuffs with low delve... but still it is a waste in compare to a real debuff train. as long as you do not get that fact, discussions are wasted on that topic. go and do the math on dps output for classes in different setups. you will notice that the theurg isn't a dps slot at all.
you can build tones of different groups, the only question is are they able to compete with the stuff other realms build?
- 1 setup: no debuff train but two casters. would be a no go for all other realms to build such a group
- 2 setup: you go with 2 heals / rezz players and a double debuff train or a matter one with wired specs on some of the casters with high variation and little utility. don't see other realms building something like that.
- 3 setup: what even is the idea behind that? play without interrupt and hope that the enemy is afk?
@tald
well then you have to tell me which setups in hib and mid have to double debuff for their caster train?
- 1 caster in a group: it is not there for debuffing, purely run for utility and or pet clear
- 2 casters in a group: hib and mid always run a debuff train in that case. albion can't without completely miss specing the sorc. this is no cc line and high variation on the nuke itself and it would force your theurg to always spec earth only to get a high matter nuke. nobody does that because it's even worse then running no debuff.
- 3 casters in a group: hib and mid will most likely 99%+ have a 3 man train. albion however does not have any good option to add a 3 caster to make a 3 man assist train out of theurg + sorc + x.
- x casters. the picture remains the same. hib and mid have lot of options to run them. albion always suffers on a none existing synergy here.
@Vanesyra I think there is a consensus that alb caster trains do a bit less dmg than their hib counterpart.
However, if you take the specific case of a body train that looks something like this
Cleric/friar/sorc/cab/theurg/pally/arms/minstrel
The dmg is a bit low, but the peels, cc and interupts you get are insane compared to potential other setups. Swap a pally for a mauler and boom you have a huge dps caster train with still crazy rupts.
I agree that alb needs a bit more focus on group comp because it is easy to be too squishy or lack dps or rupts easily. They don’t have a class like a bard that takes pretty much all you need in a group (cc, rupts, soj, sos) or a healer (cc, heals, soj).
Like many classes the theurg fits a specific role centered around rupts. Can have everything in life (aside from the healer, they should really get an oj insta summon pet that is cc immune and a 219 delve dd on a 2 sec cast time)
Is Alb underperforming because it is a realm a bit more difficult to play correctly (ppl need to have a clue how to pull, respect cc, etc)?
Alb is also a lot about outlasting the other group snd in today’s game, with 99.9% of the rvr in a super small area called EV, if your fight isn’t over in 1 min you will get jammed. Might not favor alb.
And I guess these are hib setups that require double debuff
Chanter/eld/ment (heat/cold)
Eld/ment/bain or ani (energy/body)
You could even run a triple debuff if you wanted
Chanter/light eld/creep ani (the utility is great, but triple debuff) even worse, the creep ani’s lifetap is energy but his bombers are matter
Indon’t think Alb is gettig shafted in any way in terms of debuff trains, at least I don’t see alb caster trains underperforming anywhere.
Every week I am pulling data for my excidio.net/herald page. Since the beginning of this I am seeing a huge unbalance on realms and classes.
Vanesyra,
First, thank you so so so much for compiling this data and hosting that web site. It's helped me a ton in just getting a better understanding of what's going on large scale with the game. I do however have several comments from a statistical and overall standpoint, because I don't think the answer is simply additional buffs of certain classes/realms... though I do believe class balance should be looked at maybe after 1.25. Who knows.
Comments:
This is aggregate data, and it's no fault of yours, heck, I couldn't even pull it together to begin with.
For the people not that familiar with statistics, some of these charts can be misleading. For examples, the RPS earned by realm, at a cursory glance to the untrained eye it appears that Alb is gaining only 5% of total rps. However in fact Alb is gaining 85.6% the rps of Mids, and 88.5% rps of Hibs, so we are talking a 12-15% difference... (still significant).
On player count, it appears that Albs are way down from Mids, but in fact they are at 96.7% of Mid players. While you do merge these later within your charts, of note, Alb is underperforming less in rps per player than the 14.4% due to being down 3.3% in players. Combine these and Alb is underperforming the other realms at closer to a 10% difference. (still significant).
Additionally, underpopulation bonuses grant more rps/player/kill to the realm with fewer people in NF, but players in NF but not in a BG or 8man or actively soloing/small manning (inactive or pve'ing) still count towards the underpopulation bonus. As a result Alb seldomly has a population bonus. You will rarely see Alb with over a 10% bonus, at any time of day, whereas you can see 85% on both Mid and Hib. This also impacts the rps earned between the three realms.
However what the data fails to show (can't show) is that alb 8man groups (both casual and more set) are significantly over performing their hib/mid counterparts. Any boosts to specific alb classes will likely further increase the 8man disparity in albs favor, and if that gets too large 8man action dies. However this data is hidden because there is no dedicated EU alb zerg, and the US alb zerg has been struggling some as of late. When 100 players gain 50k rps a night, or don't if they don't play or don't win fights, it hides the rps gained of 4-5 8man's daily successes quite easily. As a result Alb as a whole is getting slightly less rps, and that shows up in multiple ways. If you look at player kills, Alb is significantly lagging, at 73.6% the kills that Mid is getting. Since 8mans gain significantly more rps per kill, and as Alb is only lagging Mid in rps earned at 85.6%, it is safe to say that alb is gaining significantly more rps/kill, and likely due to the 8man domination. Additionally, Albs are dying less than 1% (0.7%) more than Mids. That is quite balanced looking simply at the numbers, but again it doesn't show the difference between solo, 8man, and zerg. Hib deaths are significantly lower, likely as the Hib zerg is largely unmatched except for some Anna zergs.
I"ll point to the mauler class to help confirm this. There are no meaningful differences with the mauler class itself over the three realms, yet the rps earned are substantially different.
Alb Mauler: 96m rps
Hib Mauler: 198m rps
Mid Mauler: 116m rps
Should we/can we buff alb maulers? I don't think that's the answer.
Personally I'm looking for suggestions as to how to get albs as a realm, slightly more rps, and slightly more engaged in fighting/defending the realm in general. I wonder if buffing their underpopulation bonus slightly to account for all the afk/pve players would work, or if there were a way to only count players earning rps in that aggregate.
- healers are performing a bit to well
- cleric and especially friar needs something with impact to do when there is nothing to heal. compare it with supports from other realms which one hurts more if he is standing free in the enemy group? surly not the friar and most likely not the cleric.
You have to look at healers and shamans in aggregate with say bards druids and wardens. In that respect healers and shamans are lagging, just looking at rps earned for example.
Rej Friars can interrupt (or melee/peel) and clerics can dps/mezz/stun, but neither should be pushing into the middle of an enemy group; both are more backfield classes like druid or aug healer. Part of what makes DAOC great in my opinion is that classes are not cookie cutter across all three realms, there are distinct class differences that are hopefully balanced out and countered in aggregate.
I believe part of the problem making certain alb setups so powerful currently, is that this logic above has been applied in the past, where we say because something is underperforming either vs a class on a different realm (clerics vs bards and pac healers), or is not getting a group on its own realm (pallies/necros vs theugs), the answer isn't always to buff that class even further. Perhaps the better answer would have been to nerf the other class, or even better, look at everything in aggregate, if you are comparing apples to oranges (clerics to pac healers/bards), stop. Sorcs should have a say in this as well, and I don't even want to hear the bard/pac healer complaints that sorcs get extended range mez, higher dex, pets, and significant dps in addition to their cc abilities (and now comparable defenses). Pac Healers and Bards don't need pets or dps.
On a separate note, zergs only swing the balance in RP's slightly, as the majority of RP's comes from quest completion more than kills <at least it certainly appears that way>.
Possibly, but it's much easier to complete quests if your zerg is successful and strategic. Looking at you, sir.
i know that you have two healers in each group and even with that in mind the amount of rps per player count on healers is still rank 1 performance.
A bit of a misnomer here, since
1) one player can only play one toon in 1 group at one time
2) two healers are mandatory in any mid group, and the same cannot be said of any other class on any realm. Therefore it's easier for players to get groups as a healer, and more rps are earned on healers as the perform the duties of two classes (more or less)
3) as a result you have to look at performance vs other sets, like healers + shamans vs bards, druids and wardens. If you do that, I disagree with you; they are not rank 1 performance. Hibs are on top by a little bit.
There is no need for balance as per John own words "balance makes the game dull"
To be fair, he was saying essentially that homogenization makes the game dull. Which is true. Having say a dozen ish of the same classes on each realm, means that you react to each fight the same way, and there's no real reason to start on a new realm for a fresh look, as you are simply playing the same classes maybe with different names in your group window.
That being said it would be infinitely easier to achieve game balance at least in a theoretical vacuum if the game was homogenized across realms. You would still have the player issues we have now.
On a separate note, zergs only swing the balance in RP's slightly, as the majority of RP's comes from quest completion more than kills <at least it certainly appears that way>.
Possibly, but it's much easier to complete quests if your zerg is successful and strategic. Looking at you, sir.
Actually its way easier to complete on a stealth zerg or as a small or an 8 man running over solos --- which honestly is what happens the most.
If you log on when Herorius logs on, you will see alb at 85% or greater quite often....
in re: Balance: I disagree with your assessment or, at best, consider it a revised position. DAOC had never been about homogenization <till now>, balance was achieved by providing counters to abilities; hard but infinitely more fun and challenging for the player. Clearly it takes work, perhaps resources that aren't there --- but now it's about rampant OP'ing classes and the ever <un>popular WOW gear chase. Ultimately, it comes down to one simple thing, the game has less people and less RvR than ever <yes there are spikes here and there>, I don't see much to change that; I certainly see nothing specific <to this point> that addresses the actual problems in RvR. If past is prologue....
I wonder what rvr would be like if suddenly we were playing in the original frontier? I can recall only snippets of what it was like in the old frontier.
Every week I am pulling data for my excidio.net/herald page. Since the beginning of this I am seeing a huge unbalance on realms and classes. As they introduced the dynamic under population bonus ingame, the tracing of this has become a lot harder. This is because this system is narrowing the gab on realm points owned a lot, without fixing the underlying problem of realm or class balance.
I have spend many hours in the last days to visualize the data that I have collected with my herald page. The result of this can be viewed at: excidio.net/herald/stats/balance
Some notes to this data:
- it's only counting lvl 50 characters
- the character has to do at least 1 realm point a week to be counted on this
- it's counting the data from the last year, with one data point each week
- stuff is calculated using pure javascript so everyone can look at the source and see what is going on
I invite you to browse this data and get your own opinion on this. Here is what I think this is showing and what is needed to be included in such a balance patch. Feel free to disagree on some or all of it, not saying that I got the perfect answer on all of this.
Realms Balance:
- Hibernia and Midgard are the realms that are performing on a nearly equal level, only on solo kills Hibernia is underperforming
- Albion is almost in all categories under performing in compare to the other realms, only on solo kills it's equal to Midgard.
What I think is needed:
- completely rework the cast debuff trains in albion. their needs to be a competitive debuff train where all casters of a group can join. you need more options to build a cast assist train and this options require the theurgist to be a part of the train and it requires you to have a option for theurg + sorcerer that does not require you to completely miss spec the sorcerer. this may require to move some of the debuff casts to other classes. if you have two casters in a group, there needs to be a debuff option to be competitive to other realms.
- alter bladeturn so that it does not work with "Crocodile's Tears Ring" anymore and stop it from being able to stack with other people bladeturn pulses, because one 6 sec bladeturn is enough. currently you can stack it up to 2 sec which is way to strong.
- move the bladeturn away from wardens and put it on a caster where it belongs too, because a melee only group should not have access to a pulsing blade turn.
- put bladeturn in the baseline so that every group running a bladeturn caster has access to the same level of bladeturn no mater what spec they choice.
- every pet class that can charm a pet should have the option to re summon the last charmed pet again. no more traveling without pets, also this helps alot if your pet is lost in space again because of that ugly pet pathing.
- remove the ability to buff pets because the defense they gain by this is far to powerful and the balance between buffed and unbuffed pets is broken. if you want pet buffs add pet target self buffs to the pet owners, but no more concentration buffs on them.
- summoning and releasing a permanent pet should have a reuse timer for all classes. so that you can not unlimited spam resummon if you pets gets killed or cced. currrently you need more resources to kill or cc a pet then to resummon it, that's not the way it should be.
- the healing part of paladins and heretics need to be reworked. the mana cost on paladins should be % or absolute numbers and not a mixture. and the heretic needs to be a alternative for filling in the paladins role as the needed 3 healer in the group.
- most likely in the combination with debuff trains and bladeturn changes the theurg needs a review as well. the current ice and earth pets should go into base line. the stun pets should be removed. making room for special speced pets, resistance debuffs or what ever.
- reaver and melee heretics need a look too. using a one hand weapon as dps class is horrible. it only works on vamps because of the claw damage and the damage table itself. reavers and melee heretics most likely need dps buffs as huge as switching from 1h to 2h weapons, to make them competitive and real group options.
- healers are performing a bit to well
- cleric and especially friar needs something with impact to do when there is nothing to heal. compare it with supports from other realms which one hurts more if he is standing free in the enemy group? surly not the friar and most likely not the cleric.
- as long as you can not guaranty the animation of the damage reflect shield being played and seen by the enemy, you should remove this ability or at least heavly reduce the value. a ability like this should be placed into group / realm settings that lack healing to prevent damage income and dps spikes. this is surly not the case in midgard at all.
- streamline the cooldown of RR5 abilitys down from 15 to 10 mins for all of them. just does not make sense to have equal powerful abilitys on different timers (for example paladin 15 but shaman 10?). 10 mins is once per fight, 15 mins is in worst case afk... or playing without tools...
- the ml path "Sojourner" is part of every hib group (1x bard) and every mid group (2x healer) but missing badly in albion.
- remove the need of double specing for polearms and twohand in albion, it's a huge disadvantage without any bonus
- classes that require dex + str for their weapons to deal damage are doomed by the increased overcaps. he highest overcap should in that case work for both.
- there should be a healing debuff if you climbed into a keep
and now lets enjoy the party
some very good remarks and some [edited] remarks there imho. i'll try to make a constructive reply when i'm sober
Post edited by Driralin on
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
I don't know. Balance patches in the past always end up causing unforseen other imbalances. I'm sure they will continue to do minor changes amd tweaks but I don't want to see an entire overhaul.
@Shoke
i just look at the stats and come to a conclusion that albion is under performing while hibernia and midgard are more or less equal. so i ask myself on what topics is albion weaker. the first thing are cleric + friar, if you would build a all realm group. you surely would not take a friar or a cleric in it as other realms supporters are so much better in all manners. the next thing is the debuff train combined with the overall group setup, followed by classes like reaver, heretic and so on. if you now wanna bring stuff more close together, you have to fix the albion issues and put some little nerfs onto the over performing stuff in other realms. i have given a few examples where i would put a nerf hit there.
a caster for me is always a weak spot in every group. to justify getting a caster in a group, it has to offer something that makes the enemy fear him on the dps topic. so if you run a melee group in albion you still have two casters in: theurg + sorc. do you have to fear their damage? no because there is no debuff and that is what makes this so weak in compare. and this somehow stays true even if you add in more casters and a debuff that not everyone can assist. so even in a "Cleric/friar/sorc/cab/theurg/pally/arms/minstrel" setup you fear that caster damage much less then you would fear a 3 caster setup in hib or mid.
stuff like "Cleric/friar/minst/body sorc/ice wiz/necro/necro/pally" will not work in my opinion. you lack cc and interrupt and you just will die over and over again.
i don't think albion is really harder to play or albion players are over all worse then other realms players. i think this is all about class and group synergy combined with some missing stuff for zerg warfare to stop a push or do a push on your own.
"Chanter/eld/ment (heat/cold)" on that setup you only should run heat debuff. it will give you a overall better output in a shorter amount of time. this is btw my classic example setup why to not run double debuff ;-)
@Koe
i was trying out some different layouts before going with this style. i had mostly donat style diagrams that displayed the numbers in real proportions. i switched back to the bar's because they show the difference between the values much better in my opinion, especially for people that are not that used to statistics.
on the under population bonus thing. if i remember correctly before they introduced this. the delta between mid and hib was a bit bigger and the delta to alb was much much bigger then now. so based on this albion would be the realm getting most out of the under population bonus. i always considered that bonus to be some kind of "hiding" for the balance problem because it brought the realms rps closer together without fixing the problems that lead to this difference.
you can get a bit of a clue on 8vs8 performance as well. first you have the kills vs deathblows on the realms. this ratio is higher the bigger the zerg is. and on the other hand you have classes that you expect to do mainly group based rvr. a very good example in my eyes there is the theurg and now you compare that performance to other classes. in my opinion this tells me that there are more albs out there doing group based rvr, but their performance there is at a max even to the other realms. i personal read from that numbers that even there alb is outperformed...
looking at maulers in this way is a bad idea. they may look equal in first place as on paper they have the same abilities in every realm. but in reality you need to find a group spot for them, which albion and also midgard does not do very well. so looking at rps there is bad. if you however look at other stats... you get a bit of a insight in on realm performance in areas where all realms use maulers, for example 8 man. tells me the story of hib > mid >> alb
i don't think that albion is not engaged in rvr. they die more then other, so albion is out there. they just win to less. it's worse on zerg vs zerg battles which leads to the situation that albs more forcus on group based style and still there they do not do that good.
you are looking wrong on healers, shams, cleric, friar, druid, warden and bard. 1) don't go for the rps, that should be the last to be looked at because it is the most random value of all of them (heal rps, underpop bonus, quests rps mess up much there) and 2) don't aggregate them in that way as they are used in different numbers in each realm. 3) it does not matter if you have 1 or 2 of them in a single group as long as you don't look at total numbers. if you look at performance settings healers are still on top.
agree with you that this needs to be fixed on a realm and not a class base. but i do not see what you describe as: "the problem making certain alb setups so powerful currently". because based on the numbers i see and the knowing i have about the game i can't confirm this at all.
in this kind of discussions i always have the feeling that some people base their balance thoughts on patches that are long gone. especially when talking about stuff like theurgs. 10+ years ago the theurg was maybe the strongest class in the game, there was little to clear pets expect maybe thornweed field. if you wasted thornweed field on something else then theurg pets you where most likely be dead. if you c4 someone else then the theurg that just used moc, you whould die too. in the last 10 years we had tones of patches, new ways to clear pets have been added. theurg pets have been nerfed and stealth nerfed many times. nowadays many people don't even skill thornweed field anymore, but still think the theurg is the king of the hill? the same story could be told on fire wizards and their bolts...
and then there are changes most people don't even notice.
- how many did know that charming purple pets for minstrels is only temporary (since 5 years or so) disabled until a bug fix for some pve loot stuff?
- is it balanced to add a deroot at level 13 on druid, cleric and shaman? no because group clerics never speced 13 smite before. you force clerics to drop heal or buff a bit. while 99% of the druid and shaman had already 13+ speced... good design? a intended nerf to albion support? what is it?
- altering the resistance chants was a big albion and a even bigger paladin nerf? because most people (and i think that included the broadsword person that did that change) do not know that the old tri resistance chants on paladins stacked by design with other buffed resistances. and most people on top of this did not even know that mythical resistance caps increase both item and buff limits on that resistances. this combined mad that chant on the paladin the most powerful one ... gone because of somebody not understanding what he was doing...
but i feel like i have to tell this again. i am okay with major changes like removing stun pets from theurg for example, because my target is not to make albion overpowered. i just want to finally have all 3 realms on a more equal level. this will lead to nerfing some things in albion while buffing others and rebuild the group synergy by doing so.
Tone down theurg pets and necros painworking spec. Give alb theurgs a bit more dps to make up for the pet mitigation.
Give alb tanks some love and make alb tank groups a viable high performing setup. Right now they're underperforming (ie they dont do well even when players are playing well). Mercs and armsmen and reavers might be good 1v1, but I'm talking about group stuff.
And keep in mind, I'm saying this as someone with no alb chars, no active mids, who only plays hib tanks.
I did not read all of the replies. Regarding Alb needing double spec, for example, Hibs do NOT need to spec in dual weapon AND slash, crush or thrust, Albs do. I do not understand how you missed that.
Great post vanesyra and you have actually backed it up with data and statistics.
I’ve been saying alb has been underperforming for a long time.
Nice to see a post where a large amount of what is wrong with alb is laid out.
Basically alb group utility and group building is subpar to mid and hib it’s far easier to build groups on mid and hib.
So then how did Nate get wins 90% of the time? Sort of kidding. Here is my reply to all of this... Could Alb use some love? Possibly, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that Midgard and Hibernia have 1 bg that everyone tends to join, whereas on Alb you tend to run 2-3 smaller bg's. You bring up 8 man, but I have seen plenty of 8 man alb groups beat 8 man mid/hib groups.
I am not saying that all realms are in perfect balance, but anytime they start trying to work on balance like @Vanesyra is saying, it opens up a whole new bag of worms. For example, you bring up that mercs and reavers are already super powerful in solo and small man, but you want them boosted for better group damage. How do you do that without makimg them even more powerful in the solo/small man game? It's easy to sit around and think up how your realm is underperforming but all realms can do this, but trying to actually balance these things out is way harder to do without causing other major issues.
This is an old topic, however anyone saying Merc is weak 8v8 to invite them, means they have even more powerful toons. Merc is not any weaker then any light tank 8v8 and yes they even better in soloing.
So then how did Nate get wins 90% of the time? Sort of kidding. Here is my reply to all of this... Could Alb use some love? Possibly, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that Midgard and Hibernia have 1 bg that everyone tends to join, whereas on Alb you tend to run 2-3 smaller bg's. You bring up 8 man, but I have seen plenty of 8 man alb groups beat 8 man mid/hib groups.
I am not saying that all realms are in perfect balance, but anytime they start trying to work on balance like @Vanesyra is saying, it opens up a whole new bag of worms. For example, you bring up that mercs and reavers are already super powerful in solo and small man, but you want them boosted for better group damage. How do you do that without makimg them even more powerful in the solo/small man game? It's easy to sit around and think up how your realm is underperforming but all realms can do this, but trying to actually balance these things out is way harder to do without causing other major issues.
My merc dominates, I have no issues with the class.
You can't blame certain leaders for having a superior intellectual advantage over another. How did Albion go to non-existing to destroying the enemy ? Not hard to figure out.
"I think what he is doing is good. For a long time Albs not have very good leaders. Natebruner is perfect, his accuracy, his pushing"
HERORIUS
"Nate calling out fights in the Alb public bg has been a recent source of entertainment for me, most of those folks have never heard anyone call targets during US prime." Teddie
"First off I am pretty sure most Mids agree that Albs previous leaders were weak and Nate is actually bringing out action." Impounded
So then how did Nate get wins 90% of the time? Sort of kidding. Here is my reply to all of this... Could Alb use some love? Possibly, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that Midgard and Hibernia have 1 bg that everyone tends to join, whereas on Alb you tend to run 2-3 smaller bg's. You bring up 8 man, but I have seen plenty of 8 man alb groups beat 8 man mid/hib groups.
I am not saying that all realms are in perfect balance, but anytime they start trying to work on balance like @Vanesyra is saying, it opens up a whole new bag of worms. For example, you bring up that mercs and reavers are already super powerful in solo and small man, but you want them boosted for better group damage. How do you do that without makimg them even more powerful in the solo/small man game? It's easy to sit around and think up how your realm is underperforming but all realms can do this, but trying to actually balance these things out is way harder to do without causing other major issues.
My merc dominates, I have no issues with the class.
You can't blame certain leaders for having a superior intellectual advantage over another. How did Albion go to non-existing to destroying the enemy ? Not hard to figure out.
Hide in a keep and wait until you out number the enemy 3 to 1 or 4 to 1
I don't know. Balance patches in the past always end up causing unforseen other imbalances. I'm sure they will continue to do minor changes amd tweaks but I don't want to see an entire overhaul.
minor changes and tweaks ... yeah that's what BS is good at... god forbid that hey ever make a new classes after we saw what they did to necromancers.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
@Shoke
i just look at the stats and come to a conclusion that albion is under performing while hibernia and midgard are more or less equal. so i ask myself on what topics is albion weaker. the first thing are cleric + friar, if you would build a all realm group. you surely would not take a friar or a cleric in it as other realms supporters are so much better in all manners. the next thing is the debuff train combined with the overall group setup, followed by classes like reaver, heretic and so on. if you now wanna bring stuff more close together, you have to fix the albion issues and put some little nerfs onto the over performing stuff in other realms. i have given a few examples where i would put a nerf hit there.
a caster for me is always a weak spot in every group. to justify getting a caster in a group, it has to offer something that makes the enemy fear him on the dps topic. so if you run a melee group in albion you still have two casters in: theurg + sorc. do you have to fear their damage? no because there is no debuff and that is what makes this so weak in compare. and this somehow stays true even if you add in more casters and a debuff that not everyone can assist. so even in a "Cleric/friar/sorc/cab/theurg/pally/arms/minstrel" setup you fear that caster damage much less then you would fear a 3 caster setup in hib or mid.
stuff like "Cleric/friar/minst/body sorc/ice wiz/necro/necro/pally" will not work in my opinion. you lack cc and interrupt and you just will die over and over again.
i don't think albion is really harder to play or albion players are over all worse then other realms players. i think this is all about class and group synergy combined with some missing stuff for zerg warfare to stop a push or do a push on your own.
"Chanter/eld/ment (heat/cold)" on that setup you only should run heat debuff. it will give you a overall better output in a shorter amount of time. this is btw my classic example setup why to not run double debuff ;-)
@Koe
i was trying out some different layouts before going with this style. i had mostly donat style diagrams that displayed the numbers in real proportions. i switched back to the bar's because they show the difference between the values much better in my opinion, especially for people that are not that used to statistics.
on the under population bonus thing. if i remember correctly before they introduced this. the delta between mid and hib was a bit bigger and the delta to alb was much much bigger then now. so based on this albion would be the realm getting most out of the under population bonus. i always considered that bonus to be some kind of "hiding" for the balance problem because it brought the realms rps closer together without fixing the problems that lead to this difference.
you can get a bit of a clue on 8vs8 performance as well. first you have the kills vs deathblows on the realms. this ratio is higher the bigger the zerg is. and on the other hand you have classes that you expect to do mainly group based rvr. a very good example in my eyes there is the theurg and now you compare that performance to other classes. in my opinion this tells me that there are more albs out there doing group based rvr, but their performance there is at a max even to the other realms. i personal read from that numbers that even there alb is outperformed...
looking at maulers in this way is a bad idea. they may look equal in first place as on paper they have the same abilities in every realm. but in reality you need to find a group spot for them, which albion and also midgard does not do very well. so looking at rps there is bad. if you however look at other stats... you get a bit of a insight in on realm performance in areas where all realms use maulers, for example 8 man. tells me the story of hib > mid >> alb
i don't think that albion is not engaged in rvr. they die more then other, so albion is out there. they just win to less. it's worse on zerg vs zerg battles which leads to the situation that albs more forcus on group based style and still there they do not do that good.
you are looking wrong on healers, shams, cleric, friar, druid, warden and bard. 1) don't go for the rps, that should be the last to be looked at because it is the most random value of all of them (heal rps, underpop bonus, quests rps mess up much there) and 2) don't aggregate them in that way as they are used in different numbers in each realm. 3) it does not matter if you have 1 or 2 of them in a single group as long as you don't look at total numbers. if you look at performance settings healers are still on top.
agree with you that this needs to be fixed on a realm and not a class base. but i do not see what you describe as: "the problem making certain alb setups so powerful currently". because based on the numbers i see and the knowing i have about the game i can't confirm this at all.
in this kind of discussions i always have the feeling that some people base their balance thoughts on patches that are long gone. especially when talking about stuff like theurgs. 10+ years ago the theurg was maybe the strongest class in the game, there was little to clear pets expect maybe thornweed field. if you wasted thornweed field on something else then theurg pets you where most likely be dead. if you c4 someone else then the theurg that just used moc, you whould die too. in the last 10 years we had tones of patches, new ways to clear pets have been added. theurg pets have been nerfed and stealth nerfed many times. nowadays many people don't even skill thornweed field anymore, but still think the theurg is the king of the hill? the same story could be told on fire wizards and their bolts...
and then there are changes most people don't even notice.
- how many did know that charming purple pets for minstrels is only temporary (since 5 years or so) disabled until a bug fix for some pve loot stuff?
- is it balanced to add a deroot at level 13 on druid, cleric and shaman? no because group clerics never speced 13 smite before. you force clerics to drop heal or buff a bit. while 99% of the druid and shaman had already 13+ speced... good design? a intended nerf to albion support? what is it?
- altering the resistance chants was a big albion and a even bigger paladin nerf? because most people (and i think that included the broadsword person that did that change) do not know that the old tri resistance chants on paladins stacked by design with other buffed resistances. and most people on top of this did not even know that mythical resistance caps increase both item and buff limits on that resistances. this combined mad that chant on the paladin the most powerful one ... gone because of somebody not understanding what he was doing...
but i feel like i have to tell this again. i am okay with major changes like removing stun pets from theurg for example, because my target is not to make albion overpowered. i just want to finally have all 3 realms on a more equal level. this will lead to nerfing some things in albion while buffing others and rebuild the group synergy by doing so.
too much text to reply to and too much things i don't agree with.
that's one way of making people believe you have a point if noone's going to remark and disagree.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
This is an old topic, however anyone saying Merc is weak 8v8 to invite them, means they have even more powerful toons. Merc is not any weaker then any light tank 8v8 and yes they even better in soloing.
agree, merc is arguably the best light tank. from fighting against bms and mercs and dueling zerks, i can say that i fear mercs the most.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
So then how did Nate get wins 90% of the time? Sort of kidding. Here is my reply to all of this... Could Alb use some love? Possibly, or maybe it has more to do with the fact that Midgard and Hibernia have 1 bg that everyone tends to join, whereas on Alb you tend to run 2-3 smaller bg's. You bring up 8 man, but I have seen plenty of 8 man alb groups beat 8 man mid/hib groups.
I am not saying that all realms are in perfect balance, but anytime they start trying to work on balance like @Vanesyra is saying, it opens up a whole new bag of worms. For example, you bring up that mercs and reavers are already super powerful in solo and small man, but you want them boosted for better group damage. How do you do that without makimg them even more powerful in the solo/small man game? It's easy to sit around and think up how your realm is underperforming but all realms can do this, but trying to actually balance these things out is way harder to do without causing other major issues.
agree
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
Great post vanesyra and you have actually backed it up with data and statistics.
I’ve been saying alb has been underperforming for a long time.
Nice to see a post where a large amount of what is wrong with alb is laid out.
Basically alb group utility and group building is subpar to mid and hib it’s far easier to build groups on mid and hib.
only problem alb has is leadership. not classes. and for your information, alb caster group with very nice synergy in nuking /debuffing + theurg to lock everything down has no equals in the other realms. hibs have their advantage with their heat debuff train, mids have nowhere near the synergy for a caster debuff train.
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
Well that’s the problem muylae alb caster groups maybe but that’s it on alb.
To make a group on alb you have to be very very selective if you want to compete.
Because if the population you can’t run the groups that maybe could compete.
And the reason is utility on mid you can run
Healer healer shaman 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On hib bard Druid warden 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On alb your starting point is mini or sorc friar cleric 2 heals cc
So your down a heal from the start.
Your correct alb caster groups are very good but it’s a set type of group.
Utility wise for pug groups and even Zerg war alb is at a disadvantage alb allways has to compromise in group setups.
I play mid now and again on a healer but I’ve also played hib as well in fact hib was my main realm before alb and for ease of setting up a group and all round ease of play there’s no contest.
Well that’s the problem muylae alb caster groups maybe but that’s it on alb.
To make a group on alb you have to be very very selective if you want to compete.
Because if the population you can’t run the groups that maybe could compete.
And the reason is utility on mid you can run Healer healer shaman 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On hib bard Druid warden 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On alb your starting point is mini or sorc friar cleric 2 heals cc
So your down a heal from the start.
Your correct alb caster groups are very good but it’s a set type of group.
Utility wise for pug groups and even Zerg war alb is at a disadvantage alb allways has to compromise in group setups.
I play mid now and again on a healer but I’ve also played hib as well in fact hib was my main realm before alb and for ease of setting up a group and all round ease of play there’s no contest.
healer, healer, shaman is not 3 healers, it's one healer, one cc'r and one interupter.
the aug healer healer heals
the pac healer cc's and isn't a decent healer
the shaman is an interupter and has few heals.
that brings us back to the point that ANY mid group has only 6 damage dealers. any group in hib and alb has 8 people who CAN do damage if they are not required to heal.
i don't understand what you mean with 'every alb group has to compromise'
Stor Hurfru Muylasav, wildly swinging arms around. Vicomte Muylock, calling curses on enemies. Baron Muylaetrex, Undead guy. Baronet Muylaetrix, calling upon winter storms. Baronet Facetothewallmuppet, support type standing with his face to the wall most of the time. Baronetess Yovonne, taxi. some other chars with names starting with Muyl.
Totally disagree to say a pac healer can’t heal is total baloney if you can’ also heal on a pac you ain’t doing your job right.
Since the last patch shamans can be very good healers again you fail to see what’s under your nose.
The trouble is and has been for a long time on Albs is we don’t complain enough and when we do we are shouted down by both realms to preserve the status quo.
All your doing is making a great game bad just checkout the numbers who play each realms and the actual statistics kindly provided by vanesyra there’s a problem on alb and deflecting the issue denigrating the alb opinion isn’t helping matters I just wish more Albs would get off there asses and post I hear the moans every day it’s very frustrating.
Rescu albs only play for fun and to socialize. They don't play to win
Hence the realm dies slowly once again
"I think what he is doing is good. For a long time Albs not have very good leaders. Natebruner is perfect, his accuracy, his pushing"
HERORIUS
"Nate calling out fights in the Alb public bg has been a recent source of entertainment for me, most of those folks have never heard anyone call targets during US prime." Teddie
"First off I am pretty sure most Mids agree that Albs previous leaders were weak and Nate is actually bringing out action." Impounded
Well that’s the problem muylae alb caster groups maybe but that’s it on alb.
To make a group on alb you have to be very very selective if you want to compete.
Because if the population you can’t run the groups that maybe could compete.
And the reason is utility on mid you can run Healer healer shaman 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On hib bard Druid warden 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On alb your starting point is mini or sorc friar cleric 2 heals cc
So your down a heal from the start.
Your correct alb caster groups are very good but it’s a set type of group.
Utility wise for pug groups and even Zerg war alb is at a disadvantage alb allways has to compromise in group setups.
I play mid now and again on a healer but I’ve also played hib as well in fact hib was my main realm before alb and for ease of setting up a group and all round ease of play there’s no contest.
healer, healer, shaman is not 3 healers, it's one healer, one cc'r and one interupter.
the aug healer healer heals
the pac healer cc's and isn't a decent healer
the shaman is an interupter and has few heals.
that brings us back to the point that ANY mid group has only 6 damage dealers. any group in hib and alb has 8 people who CAN do damage if they are not required to heal.
i don't understand what you mean with 'every alb group has to compromise'
This is absolutely ludicrous Muy. That's like saying mentalists and wardens have no function as a healer (secondary healers are effective).
Healer/Healer/Shaman is 3 healers. If you're suggesting a shaman/pac healer will perform NO function to heal outside of CC'ing/Shearing&Diseasing then they're are not performing their job effectively.
Please elaborate how any group in hib/alb has 8 players capable of dealing damage? Rejuv friars utilizing CL styles or god forbid using staff? Clerics using baseline smite outside of shearing/healing? That's hilarious. Bards using insta DD's? Mentalist is the only one that can utilize decent DD's as well as single target CC and heals. What is a warden going to melee you to death? Is a druid going to dot/dd you to death? Just as no one is stating that a shaman is going to dot/dd anyone to death.
So to suggest that the healer/healer/shaman isn't 3 healers (1 primary healer +2 secondary healers) is incredibly confusing as Albion only has a single primary healer as well (rejuv friar), a primary CC'er that can't heal (sorc) and a secondary healer that is a buff shear/single target interrupter/secondary healer (cleric hybrid spec'd rejuv/enhance), btw, watch out for those baseline smites O.o.
Hibernia with a Bard/Warden/Druid/Mentalist setup has the capability of 4 healers (1-2 primary depending on the druid/warden spec and 2 secondary depending on mentalist/warden spec). This leaves room to play with the 4 other spot selections. Can go caster or tank style (either way I'm not seeing the 8 dps claim).
With Albion the general group setup is rejuv friar + cleric (1 primary healer, 1 secondary healer), Sorc (primary CC/interrupt - no heals) and/or Minstril (primary interrupt secondary CC, no heals), and depending on the group makeup tank train or caster group. Running the tank group in Alb offers the potential of incorporating a tertiary healer in paladins or the potential of incorporating a heretic in either setup (primary interrupter, secondary dps, tertiary healer).
So yes, Albion is down a healer from the start in most standard set ups (1 primary healer in rejuv friar, 1 secondary healer in cleric and possibly a tertiary healer in pally/heretic) compared to Midgard (1 primary healer, 2 secondary healers with the option of adding a WC warlock as a secondary/tertiary healer) and compared to Hibernia (1-2 primary healers druid/warden spec and 2 secondary/tertiary healers in mentalist/warden).
It's fair to argue for all for their realm's benefit, I just added some recent stats if anyone interested.
Ofc all lvl 50 player counts, average is for rp/player, and Hibs had some outstanding days there, yada yada, just stats.
Thanks for posting this @Gavner, stats are always welcomed and very important. The stats listed are quite interesting. Albion averages slightly more players than Hibernia with Mid averaging the highest population yet Alb is considerably lower in both average rps per player as well as total average rps earned
Well that’s the problem muylae alb caster groups maybe but that’s it on alb.
To make a group on alb you have to be very very selective if you want to compete.
Because if the population you can’t run the groups that maybe could compete.
And the reason is utility on mid you can run Healer healer shaman 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On hib bard Druid warden 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On alb your starting point is mini or sorc friar cleric 2 heals cc
So your down a heal from the start.
Your correct alb caster groups are very good but it’s a set type of group.
Utility wise for pug groups and even Zerg war alb is at a disadvantage alb allways has to compromise in group setups.
I play mid now and again on a healer but I’ve also played hib as well in fact hib was my main realm before alb and for ease of setting up a group and all round ease of play there’s no contest.
healer, healer, shaman is not 3 healers, it's one healer, one cc'r and one interupter.
the aug healer healer heals
the pac healer cc's and isn't a decent healer
the shaman is an interupter and has few heals.
that brings us back to the point that ANY mid group has only 6 damage dealers. any group in hib and alb has 8 people who CAN do damage if they are not required to heal.
i don't understand what you mean with 'every alb group has to compromise'
This is absolutely ludicrous Muy. That's like saying mentalists and wardens have no function as a healer (secondary healers are effective).
Healer/Healer/Shaman is 3 healers. If you're suggesting a shaman/pac healer will perform NO function to heal outside of CC'ing/Shearing&Diseasing then they're are not performing their job effectively.
Please elaborate how any group in hib/alb has 8 players capable of dealing damage? Rejuv friars utilizing CL styles or god forbid using staff? Clerics using baseline smite outside of shearing/healing? That's hilarious. Bards using insta DD's? Mentalist is the only one that can utilize decent DD's as well as single target CC and heals. What is a warden going to melee you to death? Is a druid going to dot/dd you to death? Just as no one is stating that a shaman is going to dot/dd anyone to death.
So to suggest that the healer/healer/shaman isn't 3 healers (1 primary healer +2 secondary healers) is incredibly confusing as Albion only has a single primary healer as well (rejuv friar), a primary CC'er that can't heal (sorc) and a secondary healer that is a buff shear/single target interrupter/secondary healer (cleric hybrid spec'd rejuv/enhance), btw, watch out for those baseline smites O.o.
Hibernia with a Bard/Warden/Druid/Mentalist setup has the capability of 4 healers (1-2 primary depending on the druid/warden spec and 2 secondary depending on mentalist/warden spec). This leaves room to play with the 4 other spot selections. Can go caster or tank style (either way I'm not seeing the 8 dps claim).
With Albion the general group setup is rejuv friar + cleric (1 primary healer, 1 secondary healer), Sorc (primary CC/interrupt - no heals) and/or Minstril (primary interrupt secondary CC, no heals), and depending on the group makeup tank train or caster group. Running the tank group in Alb offers the potential of incorporating a tertiary healer in paladins or the potential of incorporating a heretic in either setup (primary interrupter, secondary dps, tertiary healer).
So yes, Albion is down a healer from the start in most standard set ups (1 primary healer in rejuv friar, 1 secondary healer in cleric and possibly a tertiary healer in pally/heretic) compared to Midgard (1 primary healer, 2 secondary healers with the option of adding a WC warlock as a secondary/tertiary healer) and compared to Hibernia (1-2 primary healers druid/warden spec and 2 secondary/tertiary healers in mentalist/warden).
I mostly agree with this though I wouldn't say Hib has two primary healers while Alb has only one considering Druids and Clerics serve the exact same roles in a group setup. The same goes for Rejuv Friars and Regrow Wardens. Mids have a lot of utility packed into their Healer class allowing for some diversity in their roles; however, this also makes the class more difficult to play effectively.
Primary healer = has spread heal AND instant spec heals
Secondary healer = has no instant spec heals
Tertiary healer = has no spec group heal OR has limited power pool with spec group heal
The above designations are rated by healing effectiveness (if spec'd) for each respective class, not necessarily their role(s) in a group. My suggestion would be to give Heretics a spec group heal and remove it from Paladins which would provide Albion with a more effective third healing class.
"The grab bag isn't for explaining every single class change decision or reasoning or that's all we would ever do." - John_Broadsword
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
I think most of the imbalance that’s obvious in the game is population related. Last few times I’ve logged in during US prime I log within 2 hours at most since it’s so slow.
Comments
I disagree, all realms to some extent need to double debuff (purely optional).
Hibernia seems to be in the best place to utilize the single debuff standard debuff trains
Heat/Energy trains are in a greater space and fits in perfectly with the Hibernian Mauler on both stances.
- Animists have Matter/Body bombers, but can easily fall back on baseline energy lifetap
- Valewalkers can fit on either of the standard debuff trains (acuity buff effects them unlike their heretic/thane counterparts)
Albion has the most debuff options, althought the matter train is really hard to make work with everyones views on the status quo.
that happens if you try to join a discussion without fact based arguments...
@Staticc
come on... you can pet or nuke at a time, that is a fact. you can follow up on some pets with some nukes, but you still do not do damage with this and if time runs out, you have zero pets out and no pressure on the enemey group anymore. that's the moment when you are loosing the game for your group...
it does not matter if you have a dd in all lines. if you can not make real use out of it. nukeing for 3xx on purple resistances is nothing that i would call useful. sure you can kill someone sometimes with that, but it's horrible in compare to a real dps caster.
sure there are necromancer debuffs, that are low delve in compare and require the necromancer to be in melee range on the target that your backline faces. which is ... you could also argument to use legendary weapons on all of the melees to debuff or use legendary staffs with debuff charges. also that sorc debuffs with low delve... but still it is a waste in compare to a real debuff train. as long as you do not get that fact, discussions are wasted on that topic. go and do the math on dps output for classes in different setups. you will notice that the theurg isn't a dps slot at all.
you can build tones of different groups, the only question is are they able to compete with the stuff other realms build?
- 1 setup: no debuff train but two casters. would be a no go for all other realms to build such a group
- 2 setup: you go with 2 heals / rezz players and a double debuff train or a matter one with wired specs on some of the casters with high variation and little utility. don't see other realms building something like that.
- 3 setup: what even is the idea behind that? play without interrupt and hope that the enemy is afk?
@tald
well then you have to tell me which setups in hib and mid have to double debuff for their caster train?
- 1 caster in a group: it is not there for debuffing, purely run for utility and or pet clear
- 2 casters in a group: hib and mid always run a debuff train in that case. albion can't without completely miss specing the sorc. this is no cc line and high variation on the nuke itself and it would force your theurg to always spec earth only to get a high matter nuke. nobody does that because it's even worse then running no debuff.
- 3 casters in a group: hib and mid will most likely 99%+ have a 3 man train. albion however does not have any good option to add a 3 caster to make a 3 man assist train out of theurg + sorc + x.
- x casters. the picture remains the same. hib and mid have lot of options to run them. albion always suffers on a none existing synergy here.
excidio.net - Charplaner / Spellcrafter / Herald - PM me on errors / wishes on this
However, if you take the specific case of a body train that looks something like this
Cleric/friar/sorc/cab/theurg/pally/arms/minstrel
The dmg is a bit low, but the peels, cc and interupts you get are insane compared to potential other setups. Swap a pally for a mauler and boom you have a huge dps caster train with still crazy rupts.
I agree that alb needs a bit more focus on group comp because it is easy to be too squishy or lack dps or rupts easily. They don’t have a class like a bard that takes pretty much all you need in a group (cc, rupts, soj, sos) or a healer (cc, heals, soj).
You can make some pretty crazy dps on alb like
Cleric/friar/minst/body sorc/ice wiz/necro/necro/pally
Like many classes the theurg fits a specific role centered around rupts. Can have everything in life (aside from the healer, they should really get an oj insta summon pet that is cc immune and a 219 delve dd on a 2 sec cast time)
Is Alb underperforming because it is a realm a bit more difficult to play correctly (ppl need to have a clue how to pull, respect cc, etc)?
Alb is also a lot about outlasting the other group snd in today’s game, with 99.9% of the rvr in a super small area called EV, if your fight isn’t over in 1 min you will get jammed. Might not favor alb.
Chanter/eld/ment (heat/cold)
Eld/ment/bain or ani (energy/body)
You could even run a triple debuff if you wanted
Chanter/light eld/creep ani (the utility is great, but triple debuff) even worse, the creep ani’s lifetap is energy but his bombers are matter
Indon’t think Alb is gettig shafted in any way in terms of debuff trains, at least I don’t see alb caster trains underperforming anywhere.
Vanesyra,
First, thank you so so so much for compiling this data and hosting that web site. It's helped me a ton in just getting a better understanding of what's going on large scale with the game. I do however have several comments from a statistical and overall standpoint, because I don't think the answer is simply additional buffs of certain classes/realms... though I do believe class balance should be looked at maybe after 1.25. Who knows.
Comments:
This is aggregate data, and it's no fault of yours, heck, I couldn't even pull it together to begin with.
For the people not that familiar with statistics, some of these charts can be misleading. For examples, the RPS earned by realm, at a cursory glance to the untrained eye it appears that Alb is gaining only 5% of total rps. However in fact Alb is gaining 85.6% the rps of Mids, and 88.5% rps of Hibs, so we are talking a 12-15% difference... (still significant).
On player count, it appears that Albs are way down from Mids, but in fact they are at 96.7% of Mid players. While you do merge these later within your charts, of note, Alb is underperforming less in rps per player than the 14.4% due to being down 3.3% in players. Combine these and Alb is underperforming the other realms at closer to a 10% difference. (still significant).
Additionally, underpopulation bonuses grant more rps/player/kill to the realm with fewer people in NF, but players in NF but not in a BG or 8man or actively soloing/small manning (inactive or pve'ing) still count towards the underpopulation bonus. As a result Alb seldomly has a population bonus. You will rarely see Alb with over a 10% bonus, at any time of day, whereas you can see 85% on both Mid and Hib. This also impacts the rps earned between the three realms.
However what the data fails to show (can't show) is that alb 8man groups (both casual and more set) are significantly over performing their hib/mid counterparts. Any boosts to specific alb classes will likely further increase the 8man disparity in albs favor, and if that gets too large 8man action dies. However this data is hidden because there is no dedicated EU alb zerg, and the US alb zerg has been struggling some as of late. When 100 players gain 50k rps a night, or don't if they don't play or don't win fights, it hides the rps gained of 4-5 8man's daily successes quite easily. As a result Alb as a whole is getting slightly less rps, and that shows up in multiple ways. If you look at player kills, Alb is significantly lagging, at 73.6% the kills that Mid is getting. Since 8mans gain significantly more rps per kill, and as Alb is only lagging Mid in rps earned at 85.6%, it is safe to say that alb is gaining significantly more rps/kill, and likely due to the 8man domination. Additionally, Albs are dying less than 1% (0.7%) more than Mids. That is quite balanced looking simply at the numbers, but again it doesn't show the difference between solo, 8man, and zerg. Hib deaths are significantly lower, likely as the Hib zerg is largely unmatched except for some Anna zergs.
I"ll point to the mauler class to help confirm this. There are no meaningful differences with the mauler class itself over the three realms, yet the rps earned are substantially different.
Should we/can we buff alb maulers? I don't think that's the answer.
Personally I'm looking for suggestions as to how to get albs as a realm, slightly more rps, and slightly more engaged in fighting/defending the realm in general. I wonder if buffing their underpopulation bonus slightly to account for all the afk/pve players would work, or if there were a way to only count players earning rps in that aggregate.
You have to look at healers and shamans in aggregate with say bards druids and wardens. In that respect healers and shamans are lagging, just looking at rps earned for example.
Rej Friars can interrupt (or melee/peel) and clerics can dps/mezz/stun, but neither should be pushing into the middle of an enemy group; both are more backfield classes like druid or aug healer. Part of what makes DAOC great in my opinion is that classes are not cookie cutter across all three realms, there are distinct class differences that are hopefully balanced out and countered in aggregate.
I believe part of the problem making certain alb setups so powerful currently, is that this logic above has been applied in the past, where we say because something is underperforming either vs a class on a different realm (clerics vs bards and pac healers), or is not getting a group on its own realm (pallies/necros vs theugs), the answer isn't always to buff that class even further. Perhaps the better answer would have been to nerf the other class, or even better, look at everything in aggregate, if you are comparing apples to oranges (clerics to pac healers/bards), stop. Sorcs should have a say in this as well, and I don't even want to hear the bard/pac healer complaints that sorcs get extended range mez, higher dex, pets, and significant dps in addition to their cc abilities (and now comparable defenses). Pac Healers and Bards don't need pets or dps.
Possibly, but it's much easier to complete quests if your zerg is successful and strategic. Looking at you, sir.
A bit of a misnomer here, since
1) one player can only play one toon in 1 group at one time
2) two healers are mandatory in any mid group, and the same cannot be said of any other class on any realm. Therefore it's easier for players to get groups as a healer, and more rps are earned on healers as the perform the duties of two classes (more or less)
3) as a result you have to look at performance vs other sets, like healers + shamans vs bards, druids and wardens. If you do that, I disagree with you; they are not rank 1 performance. Hibs are on top by a little bit.
To be fair, he was saying essentially that homogenization makes the game dull. Which is true. Having say a dozen ish of the same classes on each realm, means that you react to each fight the same way, and there's no real reason to start on a new realm for a fresh look, as you are simply playing the same classes maybe with different names in your group window.
That being said it would be infinitely easier to achieve game balance at least in a theoretical vacuum if the game was homogenized across realms. You would still have the player issues we have now.
Actually its way easier to complete on a stealth zerg or as a small or an 8 man running over solos --- which honestly is what happens the most.
If you log on when Herorius logs on, you will see alb at 85% or greater quite often....
in re: Balance: I disagree with your assessment or, at best, consider it a revised position. DAOC had never been about homogenization <till now>, balance was achieved by providing counters to abilities; hard but infinitely more fun and challenging for the player. Clearly it takes work, perhaps resources that aren't there --- but now it's about rampant OP'ing classes and the ever <un>popular WOW gear chase. Ultimately, it comes down to one simple thing, the game has less people and less RvR than ever <yes there are spikes here and there>, I don't see much to change that; I certainly see nothing specific <to this point> that addresses the actual problems in RvR. If past is prologue....
some very good remarks and some [edited] remarks there imho. i'll try to make a constructive reply when i'm sober
i just look at the stats and come to a conclusion that albion is under performing while hibernia and midgard are more or less equal. so i ask myself on what topics is albion weaker. the first thing are cleric + friar, if you would build a all realm group. you surely would not take a friar or a cleric in it as other realms supporters are so much better in all manners. the next thing is the debuff train combined with the overall group setup, followed by classes like reaver, heretic and so on. if you now wanna bring stuff more close together, you have to fix the albion issues and put some little nerfs onto the over performing stuff in other realms. i have given a few examples where i would put a nerf hit there.
a caster for me is always a weak spot in every group. to justify getting a caster in a group, it has to offer something that makes the enemy fear him on the dps topic. so if you run a melee group in albion you still have two casters in: theurg + sorc. do you have to fear their damage? no because there is no debuff and that is what makes this so weak in compare. and this somehow stays true even if you add in more casters and a debuff that not everyone can assist. so even in a "Cleric/friar/sorc/cab/theurg/pally/arms/minstrel" setup you fear that caster damage much less then you would fear a 3 caster setup in hib or mid.
stuff like "Cleric/friar/minst/body sorc/ice wiz/necro/necro/pally" will not work in my opinion. you lack cc and interrupt and you just will die over and over again.
i don't think albion is really harder to play or albion players are over all worse then other realms players. i think this is all about class and group synergy combined with some missing stuff for zerg warfare to stop a push or do a push on your own.
"Chanter/eld/ment (heat/cold)" on that setup you only should run heat debuff. it will give you a overall better output in a shorter amount of time. this is btw my classic example setup why to not run double debuff ;-)
@Koe
i was trying out some different layouts before going with this style. i had mostly donat style diagrams that displayed the numbers in real proportions. i switched back to the bar's because they show the difference between the values much better in my opinion, especially for people that are not that used to statistics.
on the under population bonus thing. if i remember correctly before they introduced this. the delta between mid and hib was a bit bigger and the delta to alb was much much bigger then now. so based on this albion would be the realm getting most out of the under population bonus. i always considered that bonus to be some kind of "hiding" for the balance problem because it brought the realms rps closer together without fixing the problems that lead to this difference.
you can get a bit of a clue on 8vs8 performance as well. first you have the kills vs deathblows on the realms. this ratio is higher the bigger the zerg is. and on the other hand you have classes that you expect to do mainly group based rvr. a very good example in my eyes there is the theurg and now you compare that performance to other classes. in my opinion this tells me that there are more albs out there doing group based rvr, but their performance there is at a max even to the other realms. i personal read from that numbers that even there alb is outperformed...
looking at maulers in this way is a bad idea. they may look equal in first place as on paper they have the same abilities in every realm. but in reality you need to find a group spot for them, which albion and also midgard does not do very well. so looking at rps there is bad. if you however look at other stats... you get a bit of a insight in on realm performance in areas where all realms use maulers, for example 8 man. tells me the story of hib > mid >> alb
i don't think that albion is not engaged in rvr. they die more then other, so albion is out there. they just win to less. it's worse on zerg vs zerg battles which leads to the situation that albs more forcus on group based style and still there they do not do that good.
you are looking wrong on healers, shams, cleric, friar, druid, warden and bard. 1) don't go for the rps, that should be the last to be looked at because it is the most random value of all of them (heal rps, underpop bonus, quests rps mess up much there) and 2) don't aggregate them in that way as they are used in different numbers in each realm. 3) it does not matter if you have 1 or 2 of them in a single group as long as you don't look at total numbers. if you look at performance settings healers are still on top.
agree with you that this needs to be fixed on a realm and not a class base. but i do not see what you describe as: "the problem making certain alb setups so powerful currently". because based on the numbers i see and the knowing i have about the game i can't confirm this at all.
in this kind of discussions i always have the feeling that some people base their balance thoughts on patches that are long gone. especially when talking about stuff like theurgs. 10+ years ago the theurg was maybe the strongest class in the game, there was little to clear pets expect maybe thornweed field. if you wasted thornweed field on something else then theurg pets you where most likely be dead. if you c4 someone else then the theurg that just used moc, you whould die too. in the last 10 years we had tones of patches, new ways to clear pets have been added. theurg pets have been nerfed and stealth nerfed many times. nowadays many people don't even skill thornweed field anymore, but still think the theurg is the king of the hill? the same story could be told on fire wizards and their bolts...
and then there are changes most people don't even notice.
- how many did know that charming purple pets for minstrels is only temporary (since 5 years or so) disabled until a bug fix for some pve loot stuff?
- is it balanced to add a deroot at level 13 on druid, cleric and shaman? no because group clerics never speced 13 smite before. you force clerics to drop heal or buff a bit. while 99% of the druid and shaman had already 13+ speced... good design? a intended nerf to albion support? what is it?
- altering the resistance chants was a big albion and a even bigger paladin nerf? because most people (and i think that included the broadsword person that did that change) do not know that the old tri resistance chants on paladins stacked by design with other buffed resistances. and most people on top of this did not even know that mythical resistance caps increase both item and buff limits on that resistances. this combined mad that chant on the paladin the most powerful one ... gone because of somebody not understanding what he was doing...
but i feel like i have to tell this again. i am okay with major changes like removing stun pets from theurg for example, because my target is not to make albion overpowered. i just want to finally have all 3 realms on a more equal level. this will lead to nerfing some things in albion while buffing others and rebuild the group synergy by doing so.
excidio.net - Charplaner / Spellcrafter / Herald - PM me on errors / wishes on this
Tone down theurg pets and necros painworking spec. Give alb theurgs a bit more dps to make up for the pet mitigation.
Give alb tanks some love and make alb tank groups a viable high performing setup. Right now they're underperforming (ie they dont do well even when players are playing well). Mercs and armsmen and reavers might be good 1v1, but I'm talking about group stuff.
And keep in mind, I'm saying this as someone with no alb chars, no active mids, who only plays hib tanks.
I’ve been saying alb has been underperforming for a long time.
Nice to see a post where a large amount of what is wrong with alb is laid out.
Basically alb group utility and group building is subpar to mid and hib it’s far easier to build groups on mid and hib.
I am not saying that all realms are in perfect balance, but anytime they start trying to work on balance like @Vanesyra is saying, it opens up a whole new bag of worms. For example, you bring up that mercs and reavers are already super powerful in solo and small man, but you want them boosted for better group damage. How do you do that without makimg them even more powerful in the solo/small man game? It's easy to sit around and think up how your realm is underperforming but all realms can do this, but trying to actually balance these things out is way harder to do without causing other major issues.
My merc dominates, I have no issues with the class.
You can't blame certain leaders for having a superior intellectual advantage over another. How did Albion go to non-existing to destroying the enemy ? Not hard to figure out.
HERORIUS
"Nate calling out fights in the Alb public bg has been a recent source of entertainment for me, most of those folks have never heard anyone call targets during US prime." Teddie
"First off I am pretty sure most Mids agree that Albs previous leaders were weak and Nate is actually bringing out action." Impounded
Discord me: Natebruner#3781
Hide in a keep and wait until you out number the enemy 3 to 1 or 4 to 1
minor changes and tweaks ... yeah that's what BS is good at... god forbid that hey ever make a new classes after we saw what they did to necromancers.
too much text to reply to and too much things i don't agree with.
that's one way of making people believe you have a point if noone's going to remark and disagree.
agree, merc is arguably the best light tank. from fighting against bms and mercs and dueling zerks, i can say that i fear mercs the most.
agree
only problem alb has is leadership. not classes. and for your information, alb caster group with very nice synergy in nuking /debuffing + theurg to lock everything down has no equals in the other realms. hibs have their advantage with their heat debuff train, mids have nowhere near the synergy for a caster debuff train.
To make a group on alb you have to be very very selective if you want to compete.
Because if the population you can’t run the groups that maybe could compete.
And the reason is utility on mid you can run
Healer healer shaman 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On hib bard Druid warden 3 heals cc interupts fill with dps
On alb your starting point is mini or sorc friar cleric 2 heals cc
So your down a heal from the start.
Your correct alb caster groups are very good but it’s a set type of group.
Utility wise for pug groups and even Zerg war alb is at a disadvantage alb allways has to compromise in group setups.
I play mid now and again on a healer but I’ve also played hib as well in fact hib was my main realm before alb and for ease of setting up a group and all round ease of play there’s no contest.
Yanno the rear stun 9 seconds OJ bd pet that beat people to death. But Yes I’m sure class changes are “swell” idea...
SMH
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
healer, healer, shaman is not 3 healers, it's one healer, one cc'r and one interupter.
the aug healer healer heals
the pac healer cc's and isn't a decent healer
the shaman is an interupter and has few heals.
that brings us back to the point that ANY mid group has only 6 damage dealers. any group in hib and alb has 8 people who CAN do damage if they are not required to heal.
i don't understand what you mean with 'every alb group has to compromise'
Since the last patch shamans can be very good healers again you fail to see what’s under your nose.
The trouble is and has been for a long time on Albs is we don’t complain enough and when we do we are shouted down by both realms to preserve the status quo.
All your doing is making a great game bad just checkout the numbers who play each realms and the actual statistics kindly provided by vanesyra there’s a problem on alb and deflecting the issue denigrating the alb opinion isn’t helping matters I just wish more Albs would get off there asses and post I hear the moans every day it’s very frustrating.
Hence the realm dies slowly once again
HERORIUS
"Nate calling out fights in the Alb public bg has been a recent source of entertainment for me, most of those folks have never heard anyone call targets during US prime." Teddie
"First off I am pretty sure most Mids agree that Albs previous leaders were weak and Nate is actually bringing out action." Impounded
Discord me: Natebruner#3781
Chantsy - Paladin____________Shaquilleoatmeal - Berserker
Cowtastrophe - Hero__________Shrimpsticks - Infiltrator
Feel free to add me on Discord: Impounded#5743
>Daoc Videos<
This is absolutely ludicrous Muy. That's like saying mentalists and wardens have no function as a healer (secondary healers are effective).
Healer/Healer/Shaman is 3 healers. If you're suggesting a shaman/pac healer will perform NO function to heal outside of CC'ing/Shearing&Diseasing then they're are not performing their job effectively.
Please elaborate how any group in hib/alb has 8 players capable of dealing damage? Rejuv friars utilizing CL styles or god forbid using staff? Clerics using baseline smite outside of shearing/healing? That's hilarious. Bards using insta DD's? Mentalist is the only one that can utilize decent DD's as well as single target CC and heals. What is a warden going to melee you to death? Is a druid going to dot/dd you to death? Just as no one is stating that a shaman is going to dot/dd anyone to death.
So to suggest that the healer/healer/shaman isn't 3 healers (1 primary healer +2 secondary healers) is incredibly confusing as Albion only has a single primary healer as well (rejuv friar), a primary CC'er that can't heal (sorc) and a secondary healer that is a buff shear/single target interrupter/secondary healer (cleric hybrid spec'd rejuv/enhance), btw, watch out for those baseline smites O.o.
Hibernia with a Bard/Warden/Druid/Mentalist setup has the capability of 4 healers (1-2 primary depending on the druid/warden spec and 2 secondary depending on mentalist/warden spec). This leaves room to play with the 4 other spot selections. Can go caster or tank style (either way I'm not seeing the 8 dps claim).
With Albion the general group setup is rejuv friar + cleric (1 primary healer, 1 secondary healer), Sorc (primary CC/interrupt - no heals) and/or Minstril (primary interrupt secondary CC, no heals), and depending on the group makeup tank train or caster group. Running the tank group in Alb offers the potential of incorporating a tertiary healer in paladins or the potential of incorporating a heretic in either setup (primary interrupter, secondary dps, tertiary healer).
So yes, Albion is down a healer from the start in most standard set ups (1 primary healer in rejuv friar, 1 secondary healer in cleric and possibly a tertiary healer in pally/heretic) compared to Midgard (1 primary healer, 2 secondary healers with the option of adding a WC warlock as a secondary/tertiary healer) and compared to Hibernia (1-2 primary healers druid/warden spec and 2 secondary/tertiary healers in mentalist/warden).
https://www.granks.com/daoc/signature/char/e7I0A3ruDmc.jpg
https://www.granks.com/daoc/signature/char/IY0C9fELOGQ.jpg
Ofc all lvl 50 player counts, average is for rp/player, and Hibs had some outstanding days there, yada yada, just stats.
Thanks for posting this @Gavner, stats are always welcomed and very important. The stats listed are quite interesting. Albion averages slightly more players than Hibernia with Mid averaging the highest population yet Alb is considerably lower in both average rps per player as well as total average rps earned
https://www.granks.com/daoc/signature/char/e7I0A3ruDmc.jpg
https://www.granks.com/daoc/signature/char/IY0C9fELOGQ.jpg
I mostly agree with this though I wouldn't say Hib has two primary healers while Alb has only one considering Druids and Clerics serve the exact same roles in a group setup. The same goes for Rejuv Friars and Regrow Wardens. Mids have a lot of utility packed into their Healer class allowing for some diversity in their roles; however, this also makes the class more difficult to play effectively.
Primary healer = has spread heal AND instant spec heals
Secondary healer = has no instant spec heals
Tertiary healer = has no spec group heal OR has limited power pool with spec group heal
Midgard
- Healer: primary healer
- Shaman: secondary healer
- Warlock: secondary healer? (has spread heal)
- Valkyrie: tertiary healer
Albion
- Cleric: primary healer
- Friar: secondary healer
- Heretic: tertiary healer
- Paladin: tertiary healer
Hibernia
- Druid: primary healer
- Warden: secondary healer
- Bard: secondary healer
- Mentalist: tertiary healer
The above designations are rated by healing effectiveness (if spec'd) for each respective class, not necessarily their role(s) in a group. My suggestion would be to give Heretics a spec group heal and remove it from Paladins which would provide Albion with a more effective third healing class.
"The type of of dev communication of 30 mins a day updates mentioned here just isn't feasible." - Carol_Broadsword
"Our Studio. Our Rules." - http://www.mythicentertainment.com/
Thegenerallee-shadowblade
Misleadinglooks-warrior
Grumblejr-hero
Danceswithdebuffs-champion
Faatkid-druid