So what were the changes to balance the heavy armor?

The problem isn’t the duration, the problem is that every stun ends after a single hit which renders them useless in mass pvp (unless you stun into stun into stun etc.) That mechanic should be removed long ago.

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I use to play heavy armor sns/hammer, now I play ig/vg medium. The difference in effectiveness is prevalent, undeniable. I can not go back. It is a hard counter to the range/caster/healer with rapier builds. Normally I use Ice storm-heavy attack (root)- Ice shower (root)- nullified oblivion - putrified scream (root) - void blade them down. Most times they don’t get away and if they do typically a teammate finished them off. However the cc’s with sns/hammer are ineffective. If I use a cc with melee weapons riposte interrupts. The biggest problem with catching highly mobile pew pew players is the rapier.

CC’s with traditional melee weapons are useless against players with rapier. I think riposte needs a shorter window.

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Yea, that’s the point, you stack up to 50% extra CC duration, and they end up being 0.5 seconds if you hit someone with freedom on all the pieces. If they get hit well, that’s bound to happen but I’m pointing out that the heavy + 300 CON milestone perks are laughable even without hit interruption. Plus, new runes have CC immunity, of course they work both ways, but I’m really thinking that heavy will not get any love this upcoming release, and quite the contrary, it’s getting neglected indirectly with other buffs that apply better for light.

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Agree, basically the only cc that is having any value for a tank is the slow.

250 Con and 300 Con getting updated and buffed into a proper mechanic would be a step in the right direction (seen nothing in the Patch Notes thus far that would suggest this sadly). Unless you are one of but a few light armor players “baiting” the enemy to attack you, you generally speaking won’t see many players who are not in heavy going above 200 Constitution.

There isn’t any incentive to go 250 Con since the cooldown is ridiculously long and reducing damage while full health is just silly, needs to offer something when you are in peril so that you can perhaps opt for some synergy between Fortified Recovery. Great Sword’s Perfect Vigilance (20% less damage taken at full health + 20% fortify for 3 seconds) passive is 10x better than the far-outdated 250 Con bonus which is cool, but why is 250 allowed to remain so bad?!

As for 300 con (and the heavy armor CC duration increase) it is dubious whether many find these bonuses helpful or even noticeable. I think VG scream roots get increased to ~3 seconds with both bonuses, but I think many people want more utility than just being dedicated CC dishers. To reference another great example from the Great Sword, the Faultless Defender passive offers some form of punishment (good blocks rend) to attackers looking to beat you up will nilly. “Don’t target the tank” is a euphemism lost in New World since they can easily get blown up and dispatched like any other player and there is no draw back to focusing one for even a couple seconds. There needs to be some enduring “punishment” or “harm” that can inflicted for extended engagements with a beefy, 300 con player.

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That’s what happens every update, we are indirectly nerfed.

That’s a good uhm, counterpoint, I mean, in most games you go around the tank/heavy as it takes too much effort to bring him down despite his low chances on actually getting a kill (not talking about WoW Paladins, those were imba).

Now anyone sees a heavy dude and thinks “ahh, free kill with maybe 1 stun in the middle, I can deal with that”.

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This is absolutely insane!! If you think rapier was used to run away wait to see how this change will make all light players obligated to use rapier --’
The few people who doesnt like the rapier “run away” playstyle are gonna change the secondary weapon to rapier because of this bad change!

Another thing that perhaps ought to be considering is having your sprint disabled when you block a melee attack. I get being hit by an attack should be punishing, but if you are expending stamina to block what you otherwise could have dodged with, you at least deserve to walk freely since you didn’t actually take the damage. This is something I am already starkly noticing while playing with the Great Sword and with the sprint disable changes in mind. It is punishing to play well with block in mind when it shouldn’t.

Ranged attacks don’t disable your sprint and are often not capable of breaking your block unlike melee. Something like that would help heavy armor in the long run with these new changes in mind.

300 con would make sense if 300 str wasn’t necessary to do anything at all. 200 str and you will tickle people in light armor. I literally critted light armor for 1k today with GA and 300 STR, with 200 str that would be 700. Light armor dps SHOULD lose to tanks in 1v1 battle. Tanks should lose to bruisers and bruisers should lose to light armor. But rn light armor rules them all

I see 15% more block stability. That’s pretty big

the changes, even with the block stability, is just…laughable. 15%, depending on how it’s worded, means the stability means jack all in combat. Even if it was additive, it’s not nearly impressive enough to help Tanks find their place in the game, especially when attacks just outright strip nearly all of your stamina from ONE…SINGLE…PERSON.

They don’t want to talk about the elephant in the room, the problem that if solved would follow a domino effect of tweaks that can change the game for the better, and that elephant being their Diminishing Returns is terrible. It doesn’t solve their issue of CC spam in the first place, especially in wars. If they fixed it to a proper system of granting immunity to CC for a short duration after being pelted by CC too many times in a short frame of time, then they can actually look into buffing CC in the first place and make Stuns actual STUNS, not sleep spells. Game is still in such a handholding situation, it’s ridiculous.

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this is not new.

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Right now, the highest stability in the game is 50%, 59.6% with the Sturdy perk. With it additive, the 15% boost is only 65% on a the tower shield, or 74.6% with Sturdy. This is, again, far too low for the concept of a Tank going into engagements. The entire point of a Tank is to get in, disrupt, peel, and control the field while surviving and causing mayhem. To put into perspective, a single player can pop a tank in just two hits, a Strong attack and some light, quick attack afterwards from some of the melee weapons in the game. This simply nudges it to 3. This doesn’t add any strong adjustment of survivability via perk on Heavy Equipload, like damage reduction and damage output reduction, so you’re still back to Square 1 in group engagements.

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You’re right. I thought it was new with the layout change vs Live, whops. I’m really holding out to try these new dodge distance reducations and ability to ‘run’ 1 second faster before light armors.

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That tank must be built for PvE instead of PvP, If you don’t run resilience gear to PvP in a tanking set, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage

I PvP regularly against enemy tanks that are basically unkillable as a melee vs melee.

One tank runs VG/SnS, enough lockdown to make you scream :wink:

Another runs SnS WH, clear out build to basically mess up the Zerg ball when being over run on a point.

They usually have a healer, I think it’s dishonest to expect a PvP tank can survive solo against 5+ players solo. We have that issue right now against some healers and it’s not fun gameplay

I was clearly talking about the STAMINA damage of the shield? Which was why I was responding to your very shield comment?

Also, no, the lockdown doesn’t work with SnS because SnS system is STUNS, and STUNS in this game are not worth using. Not only does it have glaring alert in combat, which is easily avoidable due to Action cancelling now being a thing (seriously, you’d have to fight against a terrible player if you can pop someone with shield bash), and that if you do manage to get a hit, the stun breaks on any form of damage. Like seriously, who the hell thinks that’s great design? Especially for a spell that has a long cooldown?

And finally, dishonesty? Are you joking? A PvP tank in MMOs with that are built for PvP in mind CAN survive against 5 or more players, That’s literally their function, to go in and CC and survive. That’s what makes them dangerous. You have to build against them (tankbusters), otherwise general DPS falls flat on their face, as it should be, they’re literally designed to counter them. LIke why do you think people get so toxic when a Tank enters a WoW arena? Because if they weren’t kitted out for tankbusting, they get run over, and since Tanks are few and far in that game, most people don’t even bother trying to kit out for tankbusting just for the small chance their next opponent is a walking tank.

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Another problem not fully addressed by AGS is that CON scaling keeps providing the same amount of HP by each point, while stacking damage makes an algorithmic increase on the damage output.

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Thanks @zerginfestor Do you have a video of you being block broken from a single attack? Because thats not what I’m experiencing in PvP. Obviously different weapons do different stamina damage so would love to see it in action and compare notes.

The build I mentioned, SnS VG lockdown is from Shield Rush (slow/pushback) and a well timed scream on low HP targets (3s root), because you’re in the ball/fray next to everyone. When Bruisers are low, scream them to secure a kill, like VG/IG that run up and scream/shower players. I understand your concerns with shield bash STUNS (actually sleeps), as a tank I wouldn’t run Shield Bash because as you mentioned, it doesn’t work well in clumps because its instantly broken. The build I mentioned SnS/VG, excels in stamina regeneration (from standing in your own oblivion), a 2/3s root (scream), leaping strike (engage), shield rush (self fort+slow), defiant stance (to tank more and better heals) and void blade to trade HP against weak HP players with +selfheal for you and other melee around you when voidcaller procs.

The problem with Tanks New World they do decent damage. In most MMO’s Tanks are relegated to CC bots or DAMAGE ABSORBs while doing 0 damage output. Do we want tanks to become CC Bots that deal 0 damage and are just a nuisance? I should have saved the clip, but I had a fight against a Heavy GA/WH as a Light SnS/Hatchet. We both fought for over 5 minutes between potions and food regeneration. He could kill me in about 7 hits while I would have taken over 20. This was playing almost perfectly on my part and he was practically unkillable.

cattboy, I want a tank that can do something out of the options.
Right now you are nothing more than a potential CC that can be easily avoided as WH is the slowest weapon ever conceived.

SnS is lackluster regarding damage, speed, homing. you can chain rush/stun and… see how your stamina is depleted by auto attacks. Even with good PvP shield/gear, if you win a duel if by sheer exhaustion or distraction, not by true combat chances. 300str-200con is by definition a heavy bruiser, if you switch those numbers, with the same SnS/WH combo, you get killed by any build.
CON not providing more HP the more you stack as you get with STR and damage output is just a lineal equation.

I still think that whatever changes have been announced so far are way below the expectations for SnS, and I just saw that the GS heavy attack has more reach and homing that the SnS heavy which we use for empower/remove debuffs, whatever.

Time to change I guess, as much as I hate any meta build, SnS is no longer a prime option. Truly it’s a niche build, we like it, but if you under perform under any circumstances, well, might as well go bare-ass-naked and be done with it.

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