Angelmar

The repetitive pace and no new content or bug fixes since before Christmas holiday..... I'm ready for a patch and longer CWs.

@Audin Blood of the Giants, I believe

Balance Victory!

Saturday night the NA Balance home Keep fell for the first time, a milestone. Winterblades went all in on an attack to take Order's home keep, but was repulsed when Order kept all their forces at home and only retained the Sunset Keep in Chaos lands. Undead Lords, in a surprise move, declined to recapture their home keep and instead attacked the Balance home lands. Well fought all and congratz to Chaos for being first to raze and capture Balance home keep in the 5.8 campaigns. (Due to a bug they couldn't claim it, but Chaos definitely burned down the tree and held the tree room). A chaos resurgence to come? See everyone on the Field for the next one.

Invulns still functional... whether ACE intends it that way or not, i dont know.

Until Half-Giant Iframe is nerfed, its clearly best cleric. No amount of extra SPR can beat 2 extra invulns.

Another Victory Wednesday evening with capture of Sunset Keep from Chaos. Balance Faction defensed both keeps this evening against Order. Looking forward to more big fights for the siege windows over the weekend. Once again thanks to the other balance guilds diving in on this campaign effort: Clam Stacking Casuals, Free Reign, and FoE

I've always thought the "kneel" mechanic as articulated was dumb. I do think there is potential for a GvG elimination (lose all your keeps/cities you're out) ruleset post launch, if the game has the population to support it.

It's already been said by others and in part by the OP, but GvG free politics is the soft counter to large alliance zergs. Zerg X starts on server and represents 25% of whole server pop. The rest of the server suddenly has a good reason to get coalitioned up to counter them. If this game is successful and there are scores of guilds instead of three, politics is a soft counter to zerging. Coalitioning against threat will be common. Not every agreement to work together has to last forever, UDL/LoD/SiN playing every game hand in hand for last decade is an exception rather than a rule. Coalitions to react to a threat like CN in the OP's example and then disband once there is no common threat to fight each other will be much more common. Or maybe one alliance of players will get 51% of total CF population and kill the game, but I doubt it.

The OP misunderstood the discussed mechanics in the stream.

HP should get shifted to classes or vessels or levels. Getting more than 50% of your hp from gear is awkward.

On your suggestion, Largest Faction "X" can put it's entire Zerg at the only keep open that day under your suggestion and win every single fight day after day. Simultaneous keeps means the days they leave to few behind, Faction X loses a keep. Geography, movement speed, communications, general chaos, all work to prevent Faction X from being able to win everywhere at all times. Any idiot can drop a Zerg at the only location on entire map going live that night.

Your suggestion to make keeps rotate and go live one at a time would destroy the very strong anti-zerg mechanic of simultaneous keep sieges. A faction that is snowballing in numbers and points can't be everywhere at once. The effect only get stronger the more keeps on a map. Simultaneous keep siege should absolutely be retained for the 3 faction ruleset to reduce faction snowballing/Uncle Bob issues.

Balance remains only Faction to never lose their home keep! Though it came damn close last night with joint push by Chaos and Order. Good fights to all, and saved by a the contested plant! More great fights tonight vs Chaos and Order and Restokins 70-80+ engaged. Shout out to the other Balance Guilds that have been helping with the Keep Sieges Clam Stacking Casuals, Free Reign, and FoE

https://winterblades.net/history-of-winterblades/chapter-two/