Something I’ve been following with interest on the Warhammer Alliance forums over the last couple of days — as I’ve been loaded down with work and haven’t had much time to play — is the flood of nerf calling over the Knight of the Blazing Sun’s On Your Guard! ability. There seem to be two main reasons that players on both sides appear to be screaming bloody murder over this ability:
- The damage the ability does appears to be unbalanced versus other reflective / reactionary procs in the game.
- Knights are getting credit for the damage done by the buff in scenarios, including all damage by others in their groups via the damage proc.
On Your Guard! is a reflective damage shield buff, one of the Knight’s many “commands” (which are basically auras in MMORPG-speak) that are twistable group buffs that pulse every 12 seconds. Damage shields are pretty common in many MMO classes, across a variety of games, and on their own are pretty useful but generally non-controversial buffs that are a nice way of racking up extra damage on lower-DPS classes.
Damage shields and procs serve a couple of different purposes: in PvE, they’re great for AoE farming/grinding, where a tank with high damage mitigation (parry, shield, high armor, toughness, etc.) throws on a damage shield buff and just lets a variety of mobs beat on him, throwing in some additional AoE or single-target damage as needed/possible. Buffs from other classes and heal-over-time spells help this process a lot. Knights of the Blazing Sun appear to be a prime candidate for this as they have a good set of complimentary abilities aimed toward AoE grinding, from Shield of the Sun and Shield Rush to Perseverance.
The issue here seems to be that the damage from On Your Guard! is out of whack compared to other reactive procs and shields in the game. As a Warrior Priest, I look at Prayer of Righteousness (which is an aura that procs a small bit of damage 20% of attacks made by your group), from which the damage is negligable compared to the every-hit damage on every member of your group that OYG! provides. I can see the reasons behind the nerf calls here (though I prefer Mythic’s chosen tactic of buffing things that don’t work versus nerfing — how about improving Prayer of Righteousness? hint, hint…) — I’d much prefer to have 112 damage credited my way whenever someone hits any member of my group to a 20% chance of doing 187 damage (at rank 40) on hit. If you do the math, OYG! is significantly stronger, on a class with already very high damage mitigation.
The other problem appears to be the fact that Knights are getting damage credit in scenarios for all damage caused by OYG!, which I’ve been wondering about. I don’t know if this is a new mechanic or not, but it appears to be shared with the new Swordmaster critical damage debuff to Blurring Shock. Swordmasters are getting credited with all additional damage done on top of criticals from group-mates using this debuff, too, and are apparently already concerned about future nerfs. Considering how underpowered (or at least uninspiring) Swordmasters have been versus all other tanks in the game until this patch, I find this pretty comical.
Amongst Order classes (I’m not sure about Destruction, but I would guess there’s an equivalent), there are several different additional damage buffs — both from Bright Wizards and Rune Priests — that add damage to melee attacks, or act as damage shields. I’m not sure how damage from those abilities gets counted now; does it show up as additional damage by the class casting the buff? While I like the fact that the buff-casters are given credit for the damage done in terms of showing their contribution to the group or scenario, the numbers that are showing up in scenarios are over-the-top and a bit of a cause for concern. Of course, scenario damage numbers are not exactly an excellent indication of your class’s balance or performance, but they’re big shiny numbers that people see first, and they take that as gospel.
I’m not really taking sides on this debate. I appreciate the buffs to Swordmasters (since I have a T3 SM that I’ve been playing again for the last couple of days and enjoying tremendously more), and Order really needs more tanks on the field in tiers 3 and 4. It could be that adjusting the way the damage is displayed without actually changing the abilities in question might be a solution that people haven’t really considered. Is it that the damage is over-the-top, or just that the image created by seeing tanks at the top of the DPS charts is leaving a bad taste in the collective mouths of MDPS and RDPS classes?
I’d love to hear what you have to say on the matter.
3 comments
On the blurring shock issue. There are many other abilities in the game exactly like it. I am pretty sure that the damage done by them is credited to the buff provider and not the damage doer. Chosen have Tooth. BOs have Skull Thumper (a Blurring Shock mirror). BWs have a blade enchant that does a dd proc. I am pretty sure sorcs have the same thing.
And again – any healed tank of any class can put up stupid high numbers in a scenario if he has a pocket healer. Less deaths = less corpse runs. Healers havent figured out that spam healing a DPS class is a viable strategy. Given equal healing attention a DPS class will out-damage a tank 99% of the time – even with blurring shock. The problem is, DPS guys rarely get as many heals.
I dont know about Knights so I cant comment on them. I did play a chosen during beta. Dont they have bane shield and some kind of damage aura too?
Thanks for the comment, Gyr.
I’m not entirely familiar with the Destro higher-level abilities as the highest I’ve played on that side of the fence is early Tier 2… I would assume that if the added damage from procs is being handled this way on other classes (which partly explains some of the crazy BW damage numbers I see often), then Mythic has done the same thing with the SM’s new ability and the Knight’s OYG!
You make some good points, especially regarding DPS guys not getting as many heals so they end up with a half-dozen corpse runs in a busy scenario. Though I would say that even with a pocket healer on both a DPS and a tank class, the tank class will obviously stay up longer as their survivability is significantly better = less heals required = less corpse runs, so in terms of return on investment, as a WP I’m probably better off dropping my HOTs on a tank and letting the RPs and AMs spike-heal our DPS guys. At least, that’s my take on it. :)
Back to the damage shield issue, though — could it be that the combination of reflected damage and the KotBS’s even higher survivability than most tank classes is a bit too much?
Balancing on the basis of scenario scoreboards is dangerous.
The Chosen damage reflection ability Dire Shielding (non mirrored and requires 2 tactic slots to make the most off) will in zerg vs zerg fights and keeps do far more damage than you can ever hope to do with OYG for instance, I think those situations are actually more important than scenarios.