Anyway, thanks to Gaarawarr for posting the transcript.
Q – Are you looking into making the Black Orc Boss tree more attractive?
Nate - For the Black Orc and the Swordmaster, our intention is really getting the career to feel overall top to bottom like it’s a little smoother. Whether that’s something to do with the mechanic or how the abilities interact with the mechanic, I’m not sure yet. But we want to get the career generally not feeling so step-stop, step-stop as it does currently. That’s our priority more-so than singling out a specific mastery tree.
Well it's a start. I'm not expecting much, if anything as this has been the first mutterings of changes to the mechanic since they last mentioned it wasn't totally going to be re-written. I'm wondering if it wouldn't just be easier for Mythic to re-write the mechanic than to work on the existing one. It absolutely MUST be resilient to high lag situations so we're not locked out of plans or spamming one button because the game doesn't realise we've changed plan and then jumps us ahead two. I'd actually like to sit down and design a mechanic, just to see how it would work.
Q – When you use Not in Da Face you get a 4 second immunity to your group and Savin Me Hide gives your group 4 seconds of reduced magic damage. It was said in the past that those durations would be increased. Are we going to see those adjusted?
Nate - It’s possible. They’re both pretty powerful effects, obviously specifically the CC immunity is really strong. We don’t want those to get too out of control so that they’re up all the time, but it’s certainly a possibility.
So keep the CC immunity timer which also has a great base effect (single target CD increase but ability has a cool down) as it is and increase Savin Me Hide's 4 seconds to something of substance (10 seconds?). Savin Me Hide has a hidden cool down of around 7-10 seconds depending on lag due to it being on the last plan so it's not spammable, plus you have to drop defences on your war band (no Hold the Line), find a target that isn't a tank so you might actually not be blocked or parried, go through the first two plans and then drop it on the third, rinse and repeat. If it's too good then nerf it, but I don't see anyone complaining about it as it stands, if anything it's almost under looked due to the stupidly low 4 second duration
Q – Any plans on increasing Black Orc group utility?
Nate - As I mentioned earlier, in our view, some of the bigger problems with the Black Orc and the Swordmaster are general smoothness of playability and that’s what we’d like to look into first.
OK, so we wait for the class playability before any other changes. So 1.3.6 is out the window as it's too short if they're just looking right now. 1.3.7, 1.4? Who knows. On the upside it means I won't hold my breath for patch notes expecting some wonderful work done on the class, downside though is that we'll get the little nerfs here and there and no doubt be waiting six months until we hear anymore about this. I'll put this bet out (and going by my track record of predictions which is dreadful, please don't put money on it) and say that the Black Orc and Swordmaster mechanics/playability/ability interaction or however you want to call it won't be changed within the next 6 months. In fact I'm putting a post in 6 months which will pop up reminding me to either eat my hat or to look smug on me rock. It's not that I don't think Mythic don't want to do anything, it's just that BOBs and SM's are so poorly played it's not worth the resource for Mythic to fix the classes when the game revolves around Chosen/Knights, Sorcs/Bright Wizards, Choppas/Slayers, DoKs/WPs. Those are the best in archetype for each side, both mirrors and both head and shoulders above respective classes.
