Gonna try to open a discussion here. I’ve spoken to a few people and have been perusing the forum and have concluded to start a new thread about it. So, without further ado, here we go.
There’s no question about it that the Retaliation based Warlord definitely needed nerfs. The only problem we have now is that such nerfs hurt anything that didn’t have the advantages of this class combo, or even hurt builds that had relied on overguard.
I’m quoting a different post I made on a topic with some minor edits and added boldness for emphasis on why the old Warlord Retaliation build was strong and why I disagree with the direction the nerfs took.
I’m hoping to review some of the Oathkeeper/Soldier changes and perhaps revert some of these nerfs in favor of a more precise reduction targeting Warlord Retaliation specifically so that other builds aren’t as tampered with.
Some general questions about your thoughts here.
In your opinion, was the main problem the damage or the durability of the pre-1.1.2 Retaliation Warlord?
How has the Overguard nerf affected your non-warlord/retaliation builds?
What do you think would have been a more precise nerf that would’ve less affected your particular build but accomplished the same reduction of power of the Warlord?
As a Death Knight player I use Overguard, too. I can’t say that the nerf did make the build that much worse, so I can’t complain at all. Soldier feels a bit more balanced now. I actually like that. The changes also make more defensive Relics such as Salvation more viable if you are interested in full tankyness. But again, I don’t think the changes are that dramatic, especially for combos that are able to chain two damage absorbing/deflecting/reflecting skills anyway.
I’d say something like a death knight is far more capable of surviving this nerf because of things like drain essence and enormous damage->life conversions.
I’m unsure how Soldier was unbalanced beforehand, especially in the case of Overguard. Sure, stun resistance was much harder to find, but you already paid a hefty damage penalty with Markovian’s Defense and forgo the possibility of dual wield.
This is not to mention the fact that some of the highest dps classes in the game either do not use overguard or do not use Soldier.
As for defensive relics, 2 of my most used defensive relics are seeing a lot less use now because of the overguard change. Citadel brings huge health bonuses, block chance and value, along with a %DA active.
Menhir’s Bastion brings +1 to Soldier Skills, physical resistance, and a health restore/damage absorb active.
However, I’m considering dropping both of these for Absolution simply because of the lack of adequate cooldown overlap. Whereas before I could rely on inherent tankiness or circuit-breakers to survive the 2.5 second overlap, the new 4.5 overlap means you can very well eat a lot of damage in that duration. 4.5 seconds is a lot of time to be taking a lot of unmitigated damage. This is even worse if Overguard was one of your primary means of defense.
To drive this point home, imagine if there was a 4.5 second cooldown on every single proc (that had less than 3 seconds cooldown) or WPS. That the main source of your damage is no longer available for that much time. That would certainly drastically reduce the amount of damage your character is capable of producing.
Now, think about those of us who simply made a character to tank. Characters built not to clear things quickly, but to survive in the harshest conditions for the longest times possible.
The overguard nerf really hurts that proposition.
Now, the main point I’m driving here is that these builds were hit hard when they weren’t the problem to begin with. All throughout Ashes of Malmouth, these Overguard builds were fine. They were usually not the #1 clearers, nor the seemingly most popular. But these builds ate a nerf when the problem lied with Oathkeeper.
And nerfing these builds instead of focusing the nerfs on Oathkeeper is what I disagree with.
I’ll get straight up to the point. The biggest issue here is not Warlord’s defense nor damage. Oathkeeper provides way too much physical RR by holding one auto attack. 22 flat by clicking one button, additional 35 by doing nothing and they can combine it with a further 32, and even if they thought it’s not enough, 10 from rings. 89 - 99% physical RR with no effort at all.
I said it straight up in a “how to nerf warlords” thread that the RR is the issue. If you pull off 100k retaliation (physical), you deal 200k - no other damage type can achieve anything similar.
Now, let’s ask ourselves, who’s so stupid that’d go 100k retaliation on a warlord? No one, that’s correct. A warlord can easily pull off 80k physical retaliation with no buffs, buffs increase it further to 100k, 150k, 200k, 300k… Not even kidding here. The vast majority of items give physical retaliation, which is the reason why Warlords can pull of so much damage. Almost every tank-focused item in the game has physical retaliation.
So, if we want to soften warlords, nerfing their defense won’t do shit, we’ll only end up going more offensive.
What HAS to be done:
Reduce the RR Oathkeeper provides. I said this in a previous thread, remove physical RR from Guardians. I offered to put armor shred there, but Zantai said it didn’t do anything in the end, and another guy said that when it was there in beta or alpha, the values were so small that this stat could easily be ignored and there’d be no damage loss.
Reduce the physical retaliation from ALL items. Just check, stupid epic gloves give 370 physical, while Dawnshard chest gives 420 FIRE retaliation. This easily should be 100 vs. 420 here. Devotions should not be touched too much as there’s no drawback or any kind of punishment when a non-warlord takes it - there are only benefits. Talking about Physical retaliation, 300 - 460 in Dread Armor of Azragor, 555 in Gildor’s Guard for 6 seconds, so 3330 physical retaliation. Oh… 266 vitality retaliation in Azragor…
So in the end, we can easily observe the defense is not the issue at all. Nerfing block rates won’t do shit, will only affect all other builds and Warlords will only laugh.
Yes, and that was recently changed, which is a change I wholeheartedly agree with.
My major problem is they further proceeded to mangle Overguard in terms of Cooldown and Shield Recovery instead of focusing solely on Oathkeeper which was the main problem.
I will reiterate that I view the problem with Warlord wasn’t being tanky, rather it was the obscene amounts of damage that came with it.
Hence, this thread in that they nerfed everything left and right instead of focusing on the major points of contention.
Obscene %retaliation on a default attack skill. They can currently still reliably achieve 32% right now, was previously 42%.
2 stacking Physical Resistance reduction in a single class. Why?
Availability of 2 WPS that can both have %retaliation damage. Shattering Smash still at 22% retaliation damage added (in addition to phys RR) and M. Zolhan’s Revenge which was now nerfed to 15%.
Again, Soldier durability was never a problem throughout Ashes of Malmouth, but when Oathkeeper dropped, the problem suddenly became “Warlord has too much damage and too much survivability”. And, rather than solely tune down the damage, they harmed the durability which I find to be unnecessary.
I argued here and here (Postscript) before the Nerf patch came that the problem of WL being OP was mainly caused by Oathkeeper.
IMO,Nerf the value of %RDatA by RF and item.
My Retal DE DK’s DPH/DPS was halved by Amy’s nerf( -10％RDatA nerf). Because I relied on Beronath toggle skills, the effect of nerf the physical retaliation was minimal.
The Retal DE was previously broken, but now the Cruseble has a clear time of 11 mins (non buff/banner). Another person is 8mins (3 buffers/1 banner) with Retal DE opp. This is the average speed.
Last:
Now, Arazgor life retaliation is meaningless… Change it to fire or Chaos. Or add an item that gives life retaliation.