Hello.
During the start of my New World “career” I didnt pay much attention to war horns in my wars, and it seemed like they werent much used in general.
Lately Ive started to pay more attention to the warhorns as my wars have started to become more competetive.
Ill share a link of t3 horns and the buff they provide:
The absorption it provides and healing per second is crazy in itself, but in an actual war the absorption feels alot stronger. With oakflesh, gemstone and other defensives it doesnt really add up to the actual absorption. Great axe heavy attacks are hitting other heavy players for 200 dmg while the buff is active. Attacks that normally do 2500 damage hits for 400-500 damage while buff is active. Light armor players are running on to points in huge groups without being punished.
In the current meta where most of the damage are at the big clumps (gravity wells) where people are fighting, these numbers matters alot and creates a meta thats not fun in my opinion.
Maybe this will be less noticable next patch where defenders cant spawn on point, but the warhorns are still a problem in my opinion.
The strength of warhorns was pretty noticable on my previous server VEGA where we had two strong companies called “Chaos” and “Emigracja” that had very onesided wars with eachother because of the warhorn buff. One of them controlled Windsward, the other company controlled Everfall. Each time one of them attacked the other company, the attacking company were always pushed back towards the warcamp without capping any flags.
One war where Chaos attacked Emigracja on Windsward I was watching the war from the defenders perspective. From the start it seemed like Chaos attacked with half their force, but then we realised that they were focusing on the warhorns from start. It took 10 minutes before the attackers started going for bases, and thats most likely because they managed to find a way to destroy the warhorns inside the fort. Maybe by fireball from distance, maybe throwing sticky bombs over the fort gate, who knows.
After they had destroyed the warhorns they capped all three flags in like 5 minuts. Then they won the fort a few minuts after. The previous wars they couldnt cap one flag.
You might say that this is a strategy and a way to play wars if you want to win, but I rather fight players than warhorns the first 10 minuts in my war.
Please look into this AGS and check if the warhorns are working as intended and provides correct numbers. Seems like they dont, and if they do, 500 healing per second and 23% damage absorption is still way too powerful. But theres something off with the numbers here.