Outpost Rush buffs are not balanced and should be removed

[IlIlIlIlIl]

The buffs in Outpost Rush need to be re-thought. Zephyr Bread is fine… monster damage is fine. But the Command Post, Baron buff and Battle Bread all adding damage mitigation is not fine.

These buffs provide an incredible amount of effective HP (Effective HP is HP / (1 - Damage Mitigation %)) as effective HP scales EXPONENTIALLY with damage mitigation while the damage buffs available do not scale nearly as well. Someone going from 50% damage mitigation to 60% damage mitigation doesn’t mitigate 10% less damage, They’re taking 20% less damage. If they go from 50% damage mitigation to 75% damage mitigation, they’re not taking 25% less damage they’re taking 50% less damage. Meanwhile, Battle bread is only providing 15% more damage.

In addition, damage mitigation is a healing output multiplier. If you take less damage, each point of healing provides more effective HP. Damage Mitigation == Incoming healing, except it ALSO scales exponentially.

This is why in Outpost Rush healers are unkillable and fights devolve into people running around in AoE healing and flailing on each other until someone gets unlucky and dies.

The changes to the PTR do not address the fundamental problem with PvP which is that the damage mitigation from all sources stack too well. This is why everyone is Tank Healers, because damage mitigation provides the best scaling because of how it interacts with effective HP. The more damage mitigation you have, the better it is to stack damage mitigation and so everyone is trapped in this optimization where the only way to play is to get every possible source of mitigation. There is no other stat that scales as effectively.

Outpost Rush only amplifies this by providing even more sources of damage mitigation… which makes gearing for damage mitigation even stronger. Outpost Rush is fun right up until people start buying Battle Bread and building Command Posts, then it devolves into a tanky mess.

Remove the Damage and Damage mitigation from all Outpost Rush buffs.

[Beravin]

Honestly, I agree. The buffs you can get is why my usual swings end up hitting for 400-600 damage, making many tanky people almost unkillable. Plus it acts as a snowball effect, meaning the team that gets and keeps them up has a huge advantage over the other team.

[Vyci]

Personally I disagree - I actually quite like them. Many of my near-certain defeats have been overturned by distributing battle bread to the team, and upgrading our command outposts to max. Side objectives giving notable buffs to a team provide routes to victory even if you’re outmatched by the enemy, whether that be due to a lack of meta classes, etc.

[IlIlIlIlIl]

It would be better if they gave other non-combat related buffs. Like, you get a runspeed buff for 20 seconds after you respawn or you generate tickets faster.

The issue now is that it changes the combat balance. As Outpost Rush goes on, the damage dealers become noticeably less effective and healers become even more powerful. The buff should be neutral when it comes to affecting the actual core combat.

Imagine if, instead of damage mitigation, it just added 50%, 100%, 200% damage increases. Then everybody would be playing Muskets because as the game progressed damage became so powerful that it doesn’t make any sense to play anything else. This is the situation that we’re in with damage mitigation. It is poorly designed because of the exponential scaling of effective HP and effective healing.