A New Idea to Fix Warsong Gulch? - Page 4

Opioid · 01/15/08, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by Zraknul

While shamans are still pretty strong in wsg, druids are on another tier. Druids are the most mobile healers by a large margin with their healing changes in 2.0/expo. Arcane shot as another item on the list that dispels ghostwolf is pretty rough as well.

I just meant that by playing a shaman well you can change the course of most any PUG. I don't disagree with your statement. Resto druids are probably even a whole 'nother "tier" above the other specs they have available =P

Kaber · 01/16/08, 4:49 AM

Originally Posted by Gumma

I’ve been working on ALT gear for a while, and after this last Warsong Honor weekend, I realized how much I really loathe Warsong games. Conceptually, the game should be a blast – it’s a 10 man game which means you can easily find 9 other pals to play with. I do this – even with 10 well geared and fairly well organized players, and we will still occasionally get turtled on. My idea is to fix the turtle problem. No one enjoys a game where people hide in their flag with full or large amounts of defense making it impossible to score points.

So what’s my idea? I have a few, but I’ll propose this one and perhaps people can add on or expand to it. Essentially, I think the flag should add the following attributes:

- Force a player to remain in combat
- Add a damage over time component

My hope is that these two attributes will slow the turtle process. I’ll elaborate more on the damage over time. My thoughts is that after a 2 minute period of which BOTH the flags have been stolen (this is a fairly long time in bg standards, with AV games often lasting only 10-15 minutes), a dot begins to stack on the flag carrier, starting at 1000 dmg/sec. This dot should increase in strength by 500 dmg every 15 seconds or so, until reaching an approximate damage of 3k a second. This amount of damage COULD be healed through, but would sap a large amount of the teams needed healing to re-capture the flag, as well as it would make it much easier for an opposing team to return the flag.

So you say then – why not just drop the flag and avoid the dot when turtling? I would suggest making the flag produce an aura damage of 25 yards that ignores LoS to the appropriate team carrying it. The damage out put would be identical to the individual who carried the flag last.

I realize there are potential downsides to this “fix.” Teams without healers or very limited healers would have almost no chance of turtling. This could potentially allow teams with lots of healers to turtle themselves and just try and outlast the other teams. I don’t consider this a significant downside.

Anyway, it’s just my thoughts. I’d like to see warsong an enjoyable game - if such a feat is possible.

-- edit

I should briefly add that I am aware of the suggestions to make WSG more like an AV setup with reinforcements etc, but I thought that perhaps this would be a simple fix that would be easy to implement. However, the fix WSG topic may have been beaten to death

Damage over time would just punish PuGs that don't happen to have a healer in the BG. I think it would be easier (and force less turtling/more need to go after the flag) if they simply reset the flags if both have been held with no progress for 5 minutes. Everytime a flag is picked up or returned (and I mean from the base to avoid players just swapping the flag around), the timer resets for all flag carriers. So if I were holding the flag and farming the opposition, after 5 minutes I either cap it or it gets returned. If I'm holding it for 3 minutes and someone picks up our flag, I get the timer reset to 5 minutes (as do they). If they drop it and another teammate picks it up, the timer does not reset. This way in those stale mate matches where neither side can make any progress, the flags just return themselves at the same time after the 5 minutes have elapsed and you start over. This will keep games where each side just sends out 2-3 people and the rest turtle from ending up as hour long headaches.

You could have a timer up at the top of the screen next to the score counting down until the flags are reset. Picking up one of the flags will start it, and each subsequent pick-up or return will reset the clock.

Kaber · 01/16/08, 7:08 AM

Originally Posted by Nerull

Am I the only one who is disgusted with the huge difference one class can make in this BG ?
Only reason Im not pug playing it is I dont fancy rolling dice wether or not we get a druid in. Yes ofcourse you can do it without, but a semi intelligent druid and one or two semi compotent healers backing him up make such a significant difference its not remotely fun - to me at least.

Cap movement speed with flag : Yes
Make obtaining flag a 2-3 second channeled spel : Yes, if the flag still despawns after not being carried for 1 minute or so ( right now it is way less )
Hard time limit to games : With pugs yes, with premade vs premade :no, eventhough it wasnt effecient, Ive had my better games in long fights, so my final vote would still be no.

A smart Rogue can take the flags with equal if not better results than a Druid. I have had mind numbingly long games just because one Rogue on the opposing side would blow CloS and sprint down to the boot buff, then get about half field and blow his next sprint. All told he got the flag across the field much faster than a Druid could have and no one could stop him from getting out of the flag room. Every time we got someone on the opposing team to drop it, he would be waiting to pick it right back up before our guy could cap.

Mem · 01/16/08, 9:30 AM

Nevertheless the rogue lacks the ability to turtle up, break roots with such an ease. I know that preparation is a pretty powerful skill when paired with improved sprint and CloS. But it doesn't measure up to permasprinting druid in travelform. And the rogue is significantly weaker once he is zerged. Its impossible to heal a rogue vs an MS supported zerg - this is not true for a druid in bear.

Take note, I won't whine about this but the druid is by far the most powerfull flagrunner, especially if he has the runspeed increase in animal forms from the arena/pvp set.

WSG has the potential to be a really great BG. It just takes changes for the GY mechanik in order to prevent those super turtles. One option would be to place the graveyards further to the middle which would require the turtling force to have a longer way to the flag spot. Thus its pretty easy to play the drop and run the flag game against groups turtling. At the moment GY placements greatly favours defensiv tactics and this must be remedied.

Rockstar · 01/16/08, 10:31 AM

Moving the GYs would certainly stop those frustrating 'Ganked as soon as you spawn' games where you have the enemy defense just farming your team at your spawn instead of going after your flag and whoever defends that.

In pug play this is actually quite common, and as a healer I find it incredibly frustrating because individually I can actually do little without very aggressive play from my team.

levk · 01/17/08, 11:50 AM

If you move to not requiring you to have your own flag to cap you only move druids to another tier of importance. Sure druids are better than anything else now but you can definitely win without one; I used to carry the flag a lot and midfield is surely a liability but at the extremes it's not that bad at all. If you change it to TF2 style druids are absolutely essential. Sure TF2 can do it - because if you see there's no scout in your team you can always choose to be one. You don't get to choose to be a 70 druid here.

If there's any moving of the GYs it'll again change the dynamics of the game. Killing a player in Warsong is much like blocking in the football (American football that is) - there are times when it's crucial and times when the other team pulls a fake on you or whatnot and you're basically wasting your time and costing your team. Dying already has real incentives for the mana classes, if you weaken the penalty for dying by moving the GY closer to objective you're changing the game. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying things like this have to be done very carefully and after seeing endless fuck ups on AV from Blizzard they wouldn't have my confidence in doing this right.

All of this is why I'd favor a simple timer over all else.

Rephaim · 01/25/08, 6:05 PM

Yet another "Flag Held = Buff" suggestion...

Every minute your team has the flag, you get a stacking debuff of 10% more damage and healing done. Eventually, the burst will overpower the healing due to health caps, and the turtle will break down, forcing an offense to return the flag.

This obviously makes hunters and mages much stronger.

Likas · 01/27/08, 10:13 PM

The best solution suggested so far, imo, is to just move the GY's closer to the midfield. It is an easily implemented change and one that won't change the feel of WSG. It will allow almost all strategies and team compositions to continue to be viable. The only thing it will do is slightly encourage offense and slightly discourage turtling on the GY.

Benegesserit · 01/29/08, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by Rephaim

Yet another "Flag Held = Buff" suggestion...

Every minute your team has the flag, you get a stacking debuff of 10% more damage and healing done. Eventually, the burst will overpower the healing due to health caps, and the turtle will break down, forcing an offense to return the flag.

This obviously makes hunters and mages much stronger.

All that would do is eliminate any chance of offense obtaining the flag. Everyone 10 mans to the oppositions flag, holds it together as a group until the buff is fully stacked, and prances to the cap only to find out they have an equally buffed opposition they still have to contend with.

Blizzard needs to give the team ticks of points for holding the flag and give a flag cap 1000 points. 3k to finish. The actual value per flag holding tick would likely require some math.