What’s wrong with this picture?

Okay, I lied.  There is no picture.  I want to create one in your mind though, so allow me access to your imagination for just a minute.  It won’t hurt, I promise.

You approach a Keep owned by the enemy in Reikland to find it under attack by a small group of your fellow Order players.  There is maybe eight of you at most and the first door has just gone down.  You decide to hang around and see what happens because the sight of a Keep being attacked by anything less than a warband is truly a rare thing to behold.   You can count at least five people defending the keep; the oil is manned over the second door and a ballista is set up.  It takes twenty minutes of dodging oil and wacking at the door, with only one healer trying to keep anyone who gets near the door alive, before your small ragtag bunch are able to break down the door.

You enter the keep and take a few seconds to gather your group that has grown to about ten players now at the base of the ramp.  You’ve killed a few Destruction who were trying gain access to the Keep and are pretty confident that there are at most five defenders.  Your group charges up the ramp and you as a tank gain aggro on the mobs with the other tanks while trying to kill any Destruction in the Lord room.  It’s all out chaos as spells and explosions are going off all around you.  You manage to kill a few Destruction in the fray because you see renown and experience flying off everywhere.   More Destruction show up and you wipe them, but you notice that there are several Black Orcs who are just not dying.

The Keep Lord is being hurt quite badly and your healers, who you have never met, are doing an amazing job keeping you alive.  You’re trying to juggle the Keep Lord at this point and all his adds while truly trying to take out these Black Orcs who are being kept alive by their Sentinel gear, shields, and extremely effective self heal procs.  They’re just not going down and the Keep Lord is almost dead.

The Keep Lord dies.  You’ve earned second place contribution!  Here comes the roll… You’ve done it!  You won a gold bag!  While you take note of your luck, you’re still trying your hardest to kill these Black Orcs.  They’ve begun to AoE… no… it can’t be happening… They’re STILL not dying and all of us are beating on them.  There are ten of us wailing on these four Black Orcs who are all not dying!  Ten seconds left!  NO!  Your gold bag!  You try everything but fail to kill the Black Orcs as you watch the timer run out and your gold bag disappear.   A couple Destruction who made it inside before the flip run up the ramp and help the Black Orcs kill you.  As you revive in the Warcamp, your hopes of a gold bag ripped from you, you think things can’t possibly get worse until read chat…

[Region] RandomJoe: “Those Black Orcs just killed the Keep Lord…”

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  • “What’s wrong with this picture?”

    We’re so used to the ‘zerg the lord’ tactic, it almost seems wrong when it doesn’t work. Having been on the wrong end of enough zergs, I will say whether the attackers send a few to hunt defenders, rather than *everyone* going on the lord, can be a make or break deal for them.

    Sure, if there aren’t any defending tanks, a zerg should be able to clean up a small defending force pretty quickly afterwards. But four Black Orcs, that’ve probably taken a few of yours out in the meantime? And are you *sure* the they didn’t have anyone healing them?

    I think I do see what’s wrong with the picture… Waiting for the keep lord to be dead before focusing on enemy players, who apparently did a damn good job. 🙂

  • We had about 8-10 people from my count. I admit it was hectic and we could have lost some. My group of 6 didn’t lose anyone though. Our only healer was an Archmage who must have been so pressed for heals … he did amazing.

    We absolutely did try to kill the Black Orcs. We killed every one of their allies that we saw. I admit there could have been a Shaman sitting somewhere outside the keep spamming group heals, but from what we saw in the Lord room it was just those 4 B’Orcs.

    We just couldn’t kill them. More of them were on the way according to scout reports (they showed up in time to wipe us in the lord room AFTER we capped) and we knew that if we let the fight draw out too long then we would be zerged.

    The Keep Lord, from what I perceived during the fight, died from collateral damage. He took at least 3 minutes to kill because we were so hard pressed to try and kill those B’Orcs.

    Yes, they did an amazing job defending and I commend them for that. However, I find it so beyond frustrating that they were allowed, by the game’s design, to rob us of gold bags. I’m not calling out the B’Orc class as overpowered with their survivability and self heals. I’m not saying that they didn’t outplay us and deserve to wipe us and retake it after, showing an obvious flaw in the keep design… I’m simply flabbergasted at how bad the entire thing went down for us.

    It’s not every day you get a PUG keep siege with 10 on each siege, successfully push the Lord, kill him… then lose the gold bag you won to unkillable orcs. Oh, and then you lose the keep again in under 30 seconds. It just seems bizarre that it’s “working as intended”.

  • @punk

    Really, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not getting the bags in the above circumstance. I don’t think killing the Lord should be an I-win button. Sure, most have pretty much accepted that as fact, and I think that’s where the picture above went wrong–the attackers weren’t prepared for the defenders to disagree with the ‘fact’. 🙂

    I applaud the defenders for not only *not* giving up when the Lord was down but actually turning the situation around to their advantage! I bet it took more than a few seconds for the attackers to realise the fight wasn’t won or even *over* before they started contributing again, and those are precious seconds lost.

  • Zensun, I think you’re missing the part where we tried with all our might to kill them and just couldn’t. Although it was a PUG, we were smart enough players not to just think “OOOO KEEP LORD! POINTS! FOR THE SWARM!”.

    Given the circumstances, the keep lord’s death was drawn out as long as possible. A minute more and we would have been overrun, so a retreat was out of the question. The fact that we DID take the keep lord out at all was a miracle. The fact that we lost out on the reward that we earned is a downer and the fact that the keep was able to be flipped right back like that just felt a tad arcade.

    Check out this thread where I comment on the situation and someone who was actually there backs it up. He thinks we had even less people than we did and the whole situation wreaked of bizarreness.

  • Ah, that happened a bit differently than I imagined, then. Yeah, they ARE tough to take down in any event! I’ve tried taking one out with about four people helping. I never played one, so I don’t know their mechanics, but it was PAINFULLY slow.

    But I’m afraid I don’t see this situation as the same as where you’ve cleared the keep from defenders, killed the lord, and just haven’t been able to rez a player who won a bag in time. I definitely think that player deserves the bag.

    But if the defenders maintained an active presense in the keep even after losing their Lord and subsequently retook the keep, all the while being in the Lord room, I don’t really see a problem in no one getting a bag (mechanic wise; sure, it’s frustrating and annoying!) . I think the defenders should have been considered to have successfully repelled the siege.

  • “Check out this thread where I comment on the situation and someone who was actually there backs it up. He thinks we had even less people than we did and the whole situation wreaked of bizarreness.”

    Will do… gotta head for work now, spent way too much time posting this morning! 🙂

  • CSR it and you’ll get your bag, they’ll see that you won it but was unable to loot, time/date/keep as info (maybe WB leader also).

  • We have done this on Burlok but it was IBs who trashed the Destro kill.

    Hide a healer or two on the top floor, they can AOE heal or if they are brave pop down the ramp a little to spot heal. If the tanks know what they are doing they will be stood at the bottom of the ramp leading up to the top floor. If they do this they are easier to heal AND they can block anyone who does see the healers at the top from getting to them.

  • We were running a 8-10 man guild group once and arrived at a keep right as the lord died. We decided hell with it, lets roll in there and see what we can do. There were at least as many Destro in there (they had just taken the keep) as we had plus the Lord/champs. We killed the Destro and flipped the keep. It felt GREAT. We denied them bags, won a fight we had the disadvantage in and gained some gear ourselves. It really made keep taking worth doing because there was a fight to it instead of zerging through any and all resistance. It was a tough fight that required quick timing and teamwork. If they could find a way to always make it feel that way then the game would be drastically improved imo.

    Anyways just pointing out that there is the flipside to it. Sure it sucks that it happened to you, but doing the same thing back to them someday makes this game worth playing.

  • Hmmmm sounds like an OP class to me. YUP! Hey look on the bright side, at least you’re not playing WOW anymore thus you don’t have to deal with our OP class, the Death Knight.

  • Either there’s some interesting ‘feature’ with black orcs that allowed them to do this (killing the lord with just four BOs doesn’t sound right to me) or they had a shaman healing them.

    In which case it was a group of tanks with a healer you didn’t find and kill, which isn’t quite so weird.

    Have to say tanks (ironbreakers in particular) seem to be mostly unkillable any time my squig herder gets near them and then they hit me back for 500 a shot :p

  • As others have said, there had to have been a healer or two that were unacounted for. That said, I understand how you feel about losing the bag. I’ve had the same thing happen to me on a fortress take. Finished with a gold bag win but died to some defender before I could get it 🙁

  • Yeah, there was a healer there. 4 BO’s couldn’t take a keep lord and champ by themselves. Maybe I’m too much of a fatalist, but the way I see it, if you didn’t get the bag, you didn’t earn the bag. Seeing the bag reward as automatic for just killing the keep lord is the error in my eyes. I see the bag as a rewarding for claiming and securing the keep. Still sucks though, noone likes to see potential loot go the way of the buffalo.

  • As others have said, you must have missed a healer. Did you check the combat log by any chance, it would show you if anyone was getting heals, or if it was just procs and abilities from the BO. While BO are indeed tough, they are not THAT tough to take focus fire from 10 people and survive, even in full DP gear. Were all 10 players focusing one Orc?

    And even though you killed the lord, you still did not defeat all of the keep defenders, so not earning the reward for taking a keep makes sense imo. You beat the PvE part of a keep, but not the RvR part.

  • I don’t really get why Mythic is putting so many eggs into one basket for their 1.2 miracle patch. How hard would it be to make a quick fix to something like this (having bags drop in inventories or making it so you can pass on gold bags, etc.)? This is one of those enjoyment killers that peopple were begging them to fix months ago and yet here we are… It wouldn’t shock me if it didn’t even make it into 1.2 to be honest. 😛

  • I am going to have to agree with Snafzg. It can’t be that difficult to change the mechanic of the Loot Bags. Maybe Mythic likes the fact that other players can keep you from getting them though?

    At any rate they should at least increase the amount of time that you have to collect.

  • this happens a lot on burlok {EU} since we often hit keeps with 6-12 people, the short timer on the keepchest is stupid, and GOA do not grant bags you miss due to chest despawning [ive lost many bags in pq’s and keeps]

  • We sent some people up to the top floor to check for a healer and couldn’t find one (combat log didn’t show one either, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one). I was the tank keeping aggro on the champions best that I could while the KotBS kept the Lord aggro. From what I could tell during the fight, the only people visible were a Marauder, Zealot, Magus, 4 B’Orcs, and a few others that I don’t remember. We killed -everyone- before finishing that Keep Lord except for the B’Orcs who wouldn’t die. After the Keep Lord went down and we had the short period to loot our bags we tried to focus them down as best we could – we had people scrambling to stop the attackers coming up and the B’Orcs in the Lord room while trying to find a healer.

    They did a great job defending, and I won’t try to say otherwise. They definitely “beat us” when it comes to the current Keep mechanics. I’m just not sure where my issue lies with what happened.

    Do I have a problem with the loot system or the Black Orc class or the keep mechanic or the aoe healing through walls? I guess that’s the point of this post – to find out what’s wrong with the picture. I can see the “nothing is wrong” side, but it just didn’t feel ‘right’ how it all went down.

    Perhaps the worst outcome of the whole event is that it taught me to never try and take a keep again without a zerg. That way I can’t be screwed out of my loot, no defenders will live, and we won’t have to worry about playing flapjack keep attack.

  • The real issue i see here is when a Keep is really “taken”. The chest should not pop immediately after the KL dies, in fact i would suggest it only pops after 3-5 minutes [same as the BOs] for exactly this type of thing. This will give defenders that are “stuck” in the keep to actually attempt a retake and force the offenders to defend whatever they just capped. This time limit would allow some room to clear/corpse run/rez in time to grab some loot.

  • I like that idea A LOT, Saidin. Since people seem to really be defending the idea that as long as there are defenders alive in the keep then the battle is still going, it makes sense that the keep would still be contested and no loot would appear. As it currently works, the game recognizes a victory perhaps too soon. As long as the game recognizes a victory when it does, and as long as those gold bags have loot in them that makes such a huge difference in gameplay, then this is something the devs should look at doing.

    I support this idea even more than the bags going into your inventory automatically.

  • I play a Black Orc alt, so I know how they work – not claiming I’m great with them though ;). Here’s what most likely happened:

    1. Tanks were cross-guarding each other to give whoever was getting hit a nice 50% extra mitigation.
    2. Whoever was in the front was using his hold-the-line ability. That will make him nearly invulnerable while also defending his mates behind him. However, he won’t be attacking while this ability channels.
    3. When he runs out of AP, he steps back and another steps up front to use his hold-the-line.
    4. The tanks all used the war bellow that heals. However, this only procs at best once every 10 seconds for the heal, so they had to have additional healing support. Healing for about 1500 (at work, so going by memory) every 10 seconds won’t keep the tank up against focused fire. Also, I could be wrong, but I believe I read somewhere that the armor set bonus that procs a heal doesn’t work with the B’Orc healing proc. So… #5….
    5. There was a hidden healer spamming group heals.

    The was wise to stay hidden, otherwise, he could have been spotted and taken out. One AoE heal-spammer can keep up 4 tanks that cross-guard and trade off hold-the-lines. The do rotten damage, but they will outlast twice their number in foes if the foes don’t use smarter tactics and send a couple of people to scout for healers.

    Also, I think it’s reasonable that you have to get to the chest to get the loot. It doesn’t make sense that killing any mob should magically port the loot into your bag. If someone is defending the chest, you’ll just have to fight him/them off. I’ve lost some chests to similar circumstances, and it doesn’t bother me. I just keep in mind that I play the game for fun and not as a loot treadmill like WoW.

    mm

  • Same happened to my brother in Tier 3, and he lost a gold bag…and I was there to comfort him with crying laughter in vent. No I didn’t help the situation and he is again talking to me….hehehehehe.

    As much as that situation sucked for you Keen, think about how PUMPED they must be. I’d be dancing in my chair knowing the pain I caused by stopping folks from getting a gold bag. And that’s when I get the most satisfaction in this game…knowing I’m causing the other team PAIN!

    I also can’t complain on this fact as any REAL emotion in a game is good IMO.

    good write up..i’m sending it to my brother!

  • a healer could’ve been hiding up on the 3rd floor spamming their AOE heal, or under the ramp. OR outside on the battlements.

    Neat thing about a healers AOE heal… you don’t need LOS for it to work =D

  • I agree with Saidin — either this about killing the KL or taking the keep. If it’s just about killing the KL, well, then you should be rewarded for doing just that — bag straight to inventory, if need be.

    If it’s about actually taking and securing the keep, it should be held long enough for it to be secure, people rezzed, etc. with plenty of time to claim the spoils.

  • I actually play a healer and we don’t always hide up on the top floor spamming group heals. There are a lot of places you can hide – one of my favorites being on the ground outside the back wall of the inner keep. You’d be surprised how few times attackers even look there. Door goes down and everyone rushes into the keep. At that point I drop down and commence the fun 🙂

  • It would be somewhat Ironic for an Ironbreaker to be suggesting Black Orcs are OP 😉 so I’d forget that bit… Likewise sentinel gear does not make quite as much difference as you may think, with some good use of the AH you can get great stats & resists from greens. Mix in some easily soloable tome jewelry sets and you are laughing. They will have had a healer hidden above somewhere.

    Gold bags are a pain however when you need your lesser wards. Hopefully the rvr currency being brought in will negate their importance.

  • re: unkillable black orcs – They had someone up the ramp or standing out on the balcony healing them.

    re: unable to loot the gold bag – Definitely annoying. They should just do away with the keep loot system and drop a token into everyone’s pack instead

    re: defenders staying in the keep after the Lord dies – I’m seeing this more often as players are reaching level 40 and getting better equipment. The Keep Lord is really a push over. Maybe the new Keep Lord shouldnt spawn at all until the fort is no longer ‘under attack’

  • It’s pretty common to see BO’s out heal some (admittedly slack) healers in scenarios, but even if they were cross guarded, I expect there was a healer hiding somewhere if there were 10 of you beating on one of them (if you weren’t focus firing, then you got what you deserved sorry Keen ;))

    I like Saidins idea too, they could use the same mechanic/code as a BO cap.

  • Priorities in class modification:

    1) Nerf IBs asap !! ( waaaaaay OP)
    2) Fix Sorcs (totally brocken class…)
    .
    .
    .
    3978930) Think about nerfing the only viable Destruction Tank Class

  • Testing.. 1..2..3… is this thing on?

    Okay good. For a minute there I thought that perhaps the half-dozen times I’ve said that the healers could not be found may not have been transmitted across the internet.

    Now I know some people just can’t read.

  • Just found the patch note stating:

    * The Keep loot timers have been extended to allow more time for players to reach the loot chest.

    What a coincidence. Hopefully that will help some.

  • A. Bags should go to your inventory or a pop up on you screen should show to loot them. This has been complained about since closed beta. Just more vocally after the game was launched.

    B. As a Black Orc, or Ex Black Orc, I know what they did. I like to call it a guard circle jerk. Every BO guards a different BO resulting in constant shared damage. So no matter what BO you focus you are trying to kill 2 BO’s at once. They are great mitigation tanks. I don’t really see the problem if you had 6 and they had 4.

    I use to complain that stacking “like” class tend to be more useful than stacking a balanced group because it allows for OP ability combinations but I was yelled into silence on WHA forums.

  • Personally I don’t see anything wrong with this picture. I would say that you were outplayed by a group of very well coordinated players who, through excellent teamwork managed to prevent you from claiming the keep.

  • I guess Mythic saw something wrong with the picture. 😉

    I agree though that they were very skilled players, but they had the advantage of some rather lopsided mechanics on their side.

  • Agree with Saidin. What’s wrong is the game’s automatic assumption that you’ve won the keep when the keep lord goes down which this encounter proves always isn’t true. Actually I read a dev post somewhere (MMORPG.com?), indicating that future keep battles will require you to not only to capture it but to hold it for a period to gain ownership (and I’m assuming the rewards from it).

  • LOL LEARN TO FIND HEALERS LAWL GIGGLE
    MAN YOU SHOUDLVE FOCUSED FIRE
    DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU NEED TO LOOK FOR HEALERS? LOL

    Man… It appears some of your readers have trouble, uhh, reading.

  • My guild was the first to start doing that on dark crag the first week people got to t4. I’m surprised Mythic hasn’t tried to change fort turnover mechanics lol. Basically all the boneheads who didn’t win anything don’t care to look for people hiding and just leave. How long have people been in t4…You can’t hate the game more than the sucky pos players. Your side got outplayed.