We had sort of seen glimpses of it in prior wars and OPR, but our opponents would normally run whatever the exploitable meta of the time was (rapid fire staffs/hatchets/etc).
Last night we had a war that we were defending in. We were doing well holding all 3 caps. But then they started using a very specific tactic which at the time we couldn’t defend against. They would push up to the cap as usual, but would then all pull out war hammers and spam Path of Destiny all at the same time. Our entire front line would crumple instantly and be wiped, allowing them to take the cap. Those who were around the edges/rear would either also die or be pushed very far off the cap and staggered for many seconds.
The thoughts after were along the lines of “spread out more on the cap”, but I was often at the edges of the cap as it happened (not front line, but in heavy armour), and would also be pushed/staggered for many seconds and/or killed.
I know it was a good tactic, we GG’d after (we still won, barely). I just want to see what others think of that? It takes co-ordination to pull off, but nothing beyond what most companies that war do on my server. The only real counter seems to be getting off your own path of destiny’s before theirs to disrupt at least some of them.
TLDR: 10+ Overlapping Path of Destiny’s will wipe a cap in wars. What do people think?
You can block path, still does a good ammount of stamina dmg though. Thing is once the war starts you can’t really change the strategy as far as weapon types go.
Hammer is just way too strong in numbers. The damage all of those crowd control abilities do is lower than a light attack as well.
Tack on heavy armor being higj defense for both physical and elemental damage, which was not the original design, just have to wait for balances… lot of balance patches.
Same as every other war based game. It’s actually really tame compared to the likes of albion where the tanks literally have a big ass leap that allows him to get in and aoe cc the zerg.
If they could lower the volume it would be good. Other than that I just laugh at the hammer spammers. They’ve got such high hopes for blowing everyone back out the door in OPR … but it just never really pans out.
To handle those guys in war you first need the same coordination they have; all in discord, talk discipline, shot callers, etc.
You need one group of hammer spammers that moves to the affected point, and blows the attackers away with their own hammer spam. It works best if they go in sequence; first some do that stun thing, then the rest do the pushback thing. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Fight fire with fire.
Yeah that is true. I’ve just found the War meta’s to be very lame and no real options. You can’t stack AoE’s from healers/mages, but Path of Destiny which is an AoE isn’t affected because each attack are individual events rather then something ongoing. Plus you also have that 5% cooldown reduction per enemy hit. It’s just lame that the only counter to it, is to do it yourself.
Due to lag on the caps, half the time you don’t even see it coming until you’re hit by 10 of them and explode or get thrown 5m backwards. I feel like they should at least make the staggers/knockback happen once with a resistance to further ones from the same ability for a few seconds or so. It won’t nerf the ability in normal use, but reduces it’s effect in wars where everyone is forced to cluster up on a cap. It can still be spammed a bit for saturation but that is about it.
I have yet to see a war faught with actual skill and tactic. All I saw was people abusing one thing or another.
50 monkeys doing stuns on a point isn’t pvp, nor is some military strategy, it’s just abuse of stupid game mechanics.
People like that have a tiny pp and they take every occasion to pretend how it’s larger than it is.
Yes it’s obnoxious, the way Path scales up in large group fights is something I regret not noticing during CBT.
A single PoD used against a single player is just not a big deal, it’s a medium to low damage attack with a slowish wind up that doesn’t have Grit and can be dodged on reaction. PoD is a pretty average or underwhelming ability in small group PvP. The problem is the sheer size and area covered by it and the fact that it staggers everything in that area means that once you have 20 people attacking 20 people the impact of multiple PoDs used around the same time is gigantic. It is after all the largest ranged AoE CC ability in the game, covering an area larger than the objective in Wars.
Close range melee attacks which cause Stagger or Stun to things that the weapon model connects with can be prevented through spacing. Their limited range means that even in a large group fight you’re never going to struggle to deal with all of the Reverse Stabs aimed in your direction, nobody has ever complained that multiple Feral Rushes are overbearing or that there are too many Vault Kicks being aimed at them in a War. Path is horrible to play through because you can’t just position to avoid it, Path covers so much space that every Path will hit multiple people on your team and tracking the animations to try and dodge them isn’t practical in large group when there are 10 going off.
All of the other ranged AoE options in the game like Firestaff, Ice Gauntlet and Bow AoEs are being crippled on PTR, but Path is untouched. You’re going to see a whole lot more Paths in Wars and people are going to understand just how horrible it is to try and play in an area which is covered by a 30 meter wide stagger field every 2 seconds.
I’ve been saying this for weeks now. People are going wild over healing when hammer/gaxe literally can
stagger spam path of destiny.
Sync path of destiny
Sync gravity wells which hold you on place for a ridiculous amount of time
Stagger gravity well
Stagger Shockwave
Chain clear out.
Auto lunge/tracking on gaxe left click
Like how are people even surviving when Meele using hammer/gaxe meta can spam to death. Healing makes the spam more of a brawl fest rather than tactics and even if healing is nerfed into the ground this Meta will still exist. At least with healing the circles don’t stack anymore.
There’s a reason almost everyone uses hammer in outpost/wars with the outliers of pure range.