RR5 abilities make the server worse, not better

[Mortarion]

I understand many will disagree with this and to some degree I think there are points in favor of RR5 abilities.

For example, I do think that RR5 abilities, generally speaking, have little impact on zerg play, sieges, keep takes etc. This is because they tend to have a very focused effect and their impact is relatively small in the grand scheme of the larger fight going on.

However, this is not true in smallman/solo play where the various RR5 abilities effectively change the game, and as my title suggest, not for the better.

I'm writing this primarily from the perspective of an assassin main. Yes, I know many of you think sins are aids. To each their own. I have always enjoyed the class, particularly because I don't always have time to schedule regular group play due to my job.

From the perspective of an SB who either solos or plays with a couple RL friends, I can tell you that RR5s completely change the dynamic for sins and other solo players. For example, when the server first launched rangers and scouts in particular were very dangerous. Scouts could slam kill me and that was all she wrote. Then I got purge and the roles reversed. However, now an RR5 scout can simply rr5 away and there is literally nothing I can do about it.

Before anyone says "but blood drinking is OP!" and for the record, yes it is. It's ONLY OP if you can hit your target. The number of classes that now have yet another "i-win" or "i-flee" tool at their disposal, effectively renders the ability only OP against either nightshades or one of the 3 infiltrators currently playing on Eden.

Take again for example, mentalists. Before RR5, i could kill a mentalist. Now? Not a chance. They just RR5 and heal and walk away or RR5 heal and let their friend(s) kill me. There is literally nothing that can be done about this.

The list can go on but it's already close to a TLDR post. The simple fact is, the thing about the TOA that sucked for DAoC wasn't the higher stats or ToA bonuses or even the artifacts. It was the introduction if a litany of overpowered cooldowns of varying timers which turned the game away from what had been a more skill based / class based game into more of a function of "who can blow the biggest cooldown load" kind of game. The RR5 abilities only add to this problem. In my humble opinion, they add very little to the skill aspect of the game but rather, just add onto what made the post TOA version of DAoC inferior to classic.

[Idi]

The RR5 abilities are pretty much hot garbage and significantly contribute to the OP status of caster classes at the expense of melee, which were already crap before the RR5 RA's. The majority of the abilities are designed to limit the impact of melee damage, while there are very few designed to ablate casted damage, debuffs, or CC's.

As an example, let's check out the heavy tank abilities:
Hero
- Combat Awareness
The Hero will gain 360 degree 50% evade for 20 seconds during which time the Hero's attack power is reduced by 50%.

Armsman
- Soldier's Citadel
Grants a 50% bonus to parry and block rates to the armsman for 30 seconds, but -10% block/parry rate for 15 seconds after.

Warrior
- Testudo
Players take 90% less damage from all sources, but cannot attack for 45 seconds. Attempting to use a style will cancel this ability.

So the Hero gets punished for using his ability with the fact he's only going to do half damage, the Armsman gets punished by losing 10% of his defense after the ability wears off, and the warrior isn't allowed to do any damage during his ability. Great. That's just pants on head tarded'. Why are melee classes essentially penalized for using their "great" abilities? It's stupid.

Note how all the tank abilities are designed to ablate melee damage.....which we already have defense against in the form of shield and parry specs. I don't need more help vs. melee, I need help from getting killed in 3 seconds from a caster assist train.

Meanwhile, in the casted world.....

Sorc
- Shield of Immunity
Increases your melee absorption, greatly reducing the damage of melee and ranged attacks. This effect will not stack with Mastery of Concentration.
Value 90% NINETY PERCENT!

Eldy
- Arm's Length
The target moves 215% faster and is immune to mesmerize, stun, root and snare effects for 10 sec.

Runey
- Rune of Utter Agility
Your chance to evade is increased by 90% and you can evade attacks from all directions

So a sorc and a runey will be pretty much immune to melee without suffering a single penalty in the process, and an eldy can pretty much run away at will with NO penalty.


The RR5 RA's were NOT well thought out and are just pure garbage as far as the game goes, and they should be tossed in the bin where they belong, rather than implemented.

[Fin / Valar]

Eldy
- Arm's Length
The target moves 215% faster and is immune to mesmerize, stun, root and snare effects for 10 sec.


And they saw the need of giving them Ichor

[Skiidzman]

Yeah, its a complete caster fest. Melee has no sustainability on this server. Mids aren't even brought into the calculation as Savages don't have charge.

The onset of ToA bonuses and modified RR5s really pissed a lot of folks off. You can be a melee class with max resists, CL resists, AoM4, magic resist click charge - all up - you still get plorped for 600s by rr3s casting a max speed.

Eldritch and Mentalist are seriously broken, there is not many reasons to not play Hib.

[Idi]

Eldritch and Mentalist are seriously broken....

But sorcs aren't? Or SM's with their intercepting pets? Or necro's? It's not just hib, it's pretty much every caster in the game. They really should just get rid of melee classes already and make them NPC's you can buy like the siege merchants on other servers, as every server I have played treats them as little more than fodder to be killed by pretty much every other class in the game. Heavy tanks are just PvE chars on this server.

[Skiidzman]

Eldritch and Mentalist are seriously broken....

But sorcs aren't? Or SM's with their intercepting pets? Or necro's? It's not just hib, it's pretty much every caster in the game. They really should just get rid of melee classes already and make them NPC's you can buy like the siege merchants on other servers, as every server I have played treats them as little more than fodder to be killed by pretty much every other class in the game. Heavy tanks are just PvE chars on this server.

I agree Necros are strong, individually, and in zergs for their DoT crap. SMs aren't that bad to be honest, pets don't mean squat diddly in 8s generally and util wise they lack comparatively and also in damage without a debuff train that hibs have by default. Sorcerers albeit most groups I see are running two, so yeah its annoying, but still they are manageable.

My issue is combined utility. If group composition was a template, Hibs are rolling 2100 utility, Albs 1900 Utility, and Mids down at 1500 utility.

[[UHHH] Jubbin]

I agree with OP and ldi.. but I'm bias as I play melee as a main- then again, my bias should be considered with all things surrounding this issue. I've already stated how gimp I feel as a full tank/melee class...

On top of hitting a fully temp caster for roughly 300ish, I will also see a damage variance that is strictly melee only, where I see up to 100+ damage differences based on my initial damage value.. say I hit a caster for a hypothetical 500 damage, nice hit right? well I'm also capable of hitting for 300ishs on the same target while I'm using the heaviest 2h possible... the damage variance is crazy enough..

On the other hand, casters get virtually no variances in their damage.. if they hit you for 350 a nuke, then that's what they do.. they can't all of a sudden get a variance to hit for under 350 ever..

Now I am a firm believer that a caster should hit hard. but they have so many tricks vs a melee in regards to CC or mitigating the fight to their liking.. full tanks get 1 and it's slam... outside of that, we require positional styles to snare, that instantly get broken after getting hit again unless you're an armsman (assuming they get their anytime snare hit).. but either way... we get snare nuked, perma snared... or rooted, diseased and also stunned.. vs a 1.5 cast speed, it's GG unless you capitalized on if they messed up, WHICH they wont over half the time due to AHK playing their character for them... if you see a solo or duo in RvR, they are using AHK at least 90% of the time... so relying on them to mess up so you (as a full melee) can have a fighting chance, you absolutely need det 9 AND purge 2 minimum... even so, we're still dealing with a huge damage variance with the HEAVIEST WEAPONS in-game.

it just feels like Full Melee are used for peeling or PvE..

[Vildi]

This game is a nightmare to balance to begin with, so throwing in class specific rr5 abilities is just bizarre