I think most players would agree that the experience after the recent patch is less than ideal, at least in OPR. The main issue is the heavy handed approach to smacking down pretty much all absorptions in the game. Below I will outline some changes that I feel would make the game more fun for all roles.
General Gameplay Changes:
- Return fortification/absorption back to the way it functioned previously.
- Change shirking fortification from 3.9% at 4s to 4% at 6s.
- Return Rend to function how it did before season 1.
- Change elemental aversion to affect all elemental damage sources instead of only ranged sources. Change absorption from 3.9% to 2.5%.
- Change Physical aversion to affect all physical damage sources instead of only ranged sources. Change absorption from 3.9% to 2.5%.
- Change Mortal Empowerment to Accurate Empowerment. Each successful attack will apply a stack of 2% empower that lasts for 25s. Max 5 stacks. Stacks reset on missed attack. This missed attack reset applies to both light/heavy attacks and abilities.
- Give score in OPR/War/Invasions for the use of weaken/rend on enemies and applying fortify/ empowerment/haste to allies.
- Give score for CCs applied, ccs applied to a single target should be granted 3x score.
- Reduce the intensity of all aoe visual effects. Too much eye aids going around as is.
- Blocking should drain stamina. There is nothing fun or engaging about fighting a thick boy that simply wants to hold the right mouse button.
Quality of Life Changes:
- Add a slider to control the intensity of particles and aoe effects
- Add a color picker or color dropdown for allied and enemy aoe effects
- Add a setting to change allied nameplate visibility to All Allies, Group Only, No Allies
- Add a slider or dropdown to change nameplate size.
Lifestaff Changes:
- Replace fortifying sacred ground perk with rending sacred ground. Enemies within sacred ground have rend applied to them (10% on armor, 20% on weapon), healing output of sacred ground is -20% when using this perk
- Replace 10% Fortify on orb of protection to 10% Empower, change heal from 8% wep damage to 10%. Rename to orb of aggression.
- Replace Splash of Light with You Shall not Pass. The life staff user will lob a large ball of light dealing 180% weapon damage (trajectory similar to fireball), a 3m wide translucent wall will sprout from the impact of the explosion lasting for 10seconds. The wall can be passed through but will block all projectiles. 20 second cooldown.
- Reduce Sacred Ground healing from 16% to 15%.
Void Gauntlet changes:
- Change how Orb of Decay functions, rename to orb of absorption. Remove rend from the spell. Any allies the orb passes through will be given 8% fortify for 8s. Spell can be activated exploding for additional damage and modifying the fortify for those in the area of impact from 8% to 16% for 8s. Enemies the orb passes through will be weakened by 10%. Void gauntlet user will only receive the 8% absorption if the orb returns back to them. Increase travel time of orb by 40%.
- Fortifying Echoes reduce fortify from 10% per hit to 7.5% per hit.
Ice Gauntlet changes:
- Replace pylon with a Snow Ball, a projectile that has a similar feel to fireball. The projectile will deal 140% weapon damage when splashing the target, direct hits will be 165% weapon damage. On impact an ice field briefly spreads 3m from the impact slowing all targets hit by 30% for 5s, upgradeable to 7s. The ice region remains for 5s and grants 25% haste for 3s to any allies that enter the zone.
- Replace Ice Shower with Glacial Freeze. This will be a projectile that travels the ground in a similar fashion to ice spike and can be activated at any point in its trajectory to freeze the 3m of the ground around the point of detonation. Enemies within the frost will be rooted for 3s. Enemies in effected by the frost will be given a 10% rend for 8s
Musket Changes:
- Remove bloom from aiming.
- Revert Damage nerf to stopping power.
- Increase Radius of trap to 2m. Increase projectile speed by 50%. Reduce the startup animation on the throw by 30%.
- Sticky Bomb increase detonate time from 3s to 5s. Allow the ability to be pressed again to detonate early. If detonated early the bomb will flash visually indicating to players in the area that the bomb will detonate. 0.5s after the flash the bomb detonates.
Bow:
- Remove haste on weapon swap, replace with 15% haste for 5s granted on successfully dodging an attack.
- Reduce bow heavy attack, explosive shot, penetrating shot and the first two attacks of rapid shot by 10-15% damage.
Firestaff:
- Revert flare to what it was prior to season 1
- Maximum smolder stacks changed from 5 to 3
- Pillar of fire cast time changed to what it was prior to season 1, area of effect changed from 2.5m to 2.25m
- Burnout Heat it up damage changed from 100% to 80%
- Rune of Helios area of effect changed from 4m to 3.5m
Blunderbuss:
- On a roll, increase fortify from 3% per stack to 4% per stack. Reduce max stacks from 5 to 3.
- Last chance reduce fortify and armor increases from 50% to 40%
Reasoning:
General Gameplay Changes:
We need to have absorption/fortify back to the way it was before. Shirking fort was not inherently bad, what was bad was the free fortify weapons like lifestaff were giving everyone on the battlefield, allowing players to easily hit fortify cap.
With absorption and fortify back we need to have rend reintroduced to counter that.
With ability fortifies being nerfed across the board we can increase the time of shirking fort back to 6s from 4s and increase the fort from 3.9% to 4%.
Aversions as they are implemented today are completely broken. Many things you would expect to fall under the aversions protection do not, such as ice storm, meteor shower, and ice spike. Instead of only protecting vs ranged magical or physical damage have them protect vs all sources of either physical or magical and have the amount they absorbed reduced.
I feel with the above changes players will have a real decision to make whether they want shirking fort or a weaker absorb vs either physical or magical.
Mortal empowerment was one of the biggest issues in the previous patch. Nobody likes being on the receiving end of snowball mechanics. I think changing the empowerment from being related to kills and instead accuracy of your attacks is a far more rewarding experience. Players that want to maintain stacks will need to play tight. The musket/bow players may slow down a bit to ensure they land the shot and maintain stacks.
We need to incentivize team play. An important part of team play is utility. Currently the game does not reward the player in opr or war if they are doing their job and apply various effects to enemies/allies or cc enemies.
Since we are increasing shirking fort I the fortify applied to the player should be reduced accordingly. This is reflected above where most of the fortify is nerfed on ability applications
Lifestaff:
The life staff was far too impactful in the previous patch and in my opinion is the reason the firestaff got such an overtuning in the latest patch. Removing fortify from the lifestaff not only makes the players being healed easier to kill but also the healer themselves. Previously healers could plop down sacred and kind of ignore the people attacking them, especially certain weapons like bow/musket/ig/vg/fs.
Changing splash of light from a heal to a utility spell specifically vs ranged adds something that OPR and a lot of new world pvp lacks, line of sight. This will increase the skill ceiling of the lifestaff and give the weapon some damage and utility other than healing and free absorption for their team.
Changing fortifying sacred ground to rending sacred ground which will give certain healers the ability to choose to add utility to their kit at the expense of some healing output. We want to see more diversity in the healer role.
Void Gauntlet changes:
We removed the fortify from lifestaff, some weapon needs to ability to apply allied fortify. I think void gauntlet is the perfect choice. Reworking orb to apply fortify will add a skill ceiling to the utility by making a projectile which you have a decision of activating mid travel. Additionally increasing the projectile speed will raise the skill ceiling involved with applying the increased fortify.
Moving the allied fortify to the void gauntlet should increase team play as many life staff users will continue to use rapier for survival and thus the void gauntlet will be played by a different utility player.
Ice Gauntlet changes:
Currently ice gauntlet is being carried by ice spike (which was neutered previously). Ice pylon is a skill which creates more frustration for players than it adds value. The spell is not at all interactive. The proposed replacement adds some burst and utility. Additionally, the ability will be a skill shot which we all know are a lot of fun and highly rewarding.
In my opinion ice shower creates more problems than it solves. In war it gives the defenders such a massive defenders advantage that the attacking company needs several steps ahead of the defender to overcome. The proposed replacement is a rewarding skill shot that would replace a problematic defensive tool.
Musket Changes:
The RNG bloom is an abysmal attempt at solving the issue that musket and bow proved to be prior to season 1. In my opinion the issue was less with the musket damage/aim and more with mortal empowerment allowing for a highly snowball playstyle. On top of that the falloff damage was not being applied to the split elemental damage. I do not think the bloom is at all necessary anymore.
Musket is a great weapon for keeping other ranged in check. Its hard to do that when the weapon is literally RNG.
There is no reason to nerf stopping power, revert the damage back to prior to season 1. The stagger from stopping power wasn’t comboing into anything from the musket.
I think the traps would be in a fantastic place if the area of activation was increased a good bit and the startup animation and projectile speed were increased to make the ability feel more fluid.
Adding a early detonate to the sticky bomb makes the ability more dynamic. Adding a visual indicator to early detonate will allow attentive players to react with a dodge.
Bow:
Currently bow has too much passive haste. Moving the weapon swap haste to a successful dodge fixes the problem of the weapon being difficult to catch and also raises the skill ceiling of an already high skill ceiling weapon.
Firestaff:
This weapon was clearly overtuned because it really struggled doing anything to targets being healed. I think the above changes address that.
Flare is ridiculous and completely lowers the skill floor and skill ceiling of the weapon. Terrible perk.
Smolder is doing way too much damage currently. Reducing the number of stacks should solve this problem.
The pillar cast time changes in conjunction with the aoe size changes took a high skill ceiling ability and completely lowered it. Lets turn back the cast time and slightly reduce the aoe size.
There isnt a good reason for burnout to do as much damage as it currently does. The startup time should just be quicker and have the damage increased. Lets make it more of an escape utility.
Blunderbuss:
Due to shirking being buffed the fort provided by the weapon should be nerfed. We dont need mega tank blundies running around.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.