So before patch #14 it had a 45sec cooldown, was 50 max toughness, and lasted 10 seconds. It absolutely needed some sort of buff.
Now however it is insane for a few reasons. 30sec cooldown, 100 toughness, and 15sec duration. This by itself is already very strong, but there is a few things that take it into broken overpowered territory. Cooldown curios lower the downtime even more which is ok, but then when you add this:
things get out of hand. I learned that the +100 max toughness STACKS during some high intensity missions where you can kill a lot of specials. Multiple Veteran’s can also take this ability and TEAM STACK toughness. I Have seen up to +400 in a match today!
Auric Damnation missions feel like Malice missions with this ability currently. I think It needed a buff from it’s previous state, but the uptime on the +100 toughness is just too crazy and exploitable right now.
“Duty and Honor” is also bugged I think. It prevents overkill damage from dealing extra health damage for some reason. Poxbombers and snipers have broken my toughness and done nothing to my healthbar.
I am talking 0 damage. Snipers are coded to do full damage to health if they break toughness, regardless of TDR. It’s why they normally hurt so much and are a threat. I don’t have any sniper resistance or health DR or anything anyways. It’s gotta be a bug.
Agreed.
I’ve had multiple games with 2+ zealots and veterans running the +100 abilities. It’s absurd how much easier those runs have been and nothing else comes close. The abilities constantly knock back anything dangerous and fully replenish the team while, essentially granting a permanent 100 or more toughness buff.
I like the idea of having more support based play-styles available a lot, but the team stacking for it is crazy right now.
Actually, this is indirectly another reason the veteran shout is so OP. It’s cooldown is so short you can just instantly refill toughness if it get’s removed whenever you want.
Yeah some attacks are still bugged and will even one shot 400 pee pee gold toughness. The scab captain’s plasma pistol drops you to 1 toughness no matter how much you have prior to getting hit. Etc.
But yes this interaction is gang busters strong, and you can basically build all the same breakpoints from ult diving left and right on the tree. You only need Tactical Awareness to be invincible in any scenario involving enemies. Squad Leader is the way. But with ammo regen.
That’s kind of an exaggeration, you actually have to time it properly.
On the other hand that’s pretty similar to how I use Fury of the Faithful: Keep buff up (20% attack speed in that case), stun enemies, reposition (for FotF), activate critDR (iron will in VoC’s case) and it’s on a really low cooldown with 2 charges, and it also has the damage boost aspect of course. No need for specials to kill, just to slap enemies around for CDR.
Anyway, I agree it’s a strong ult currently. With the recent buffs, I actually feel I can match Zealots in damage with a melee build which is fun.
I guess I was exaggerating there, but… A pack of specials to shoot will instantly reset the cooldown, although it does have some downtime when none are around. Fire breaking a teammates toughness means a fire special is around though, which is at least 6 seconds off the cool-down right there which can be enough sometimes.
I feel like you are reaching again. I have to run a very bad team with a revolver to get a full refill after I ult. It rarely happens.
Look, it’s strong and self-stacking is pretty stupid and should go, it also scales incredibly well with special density, but I’m not yet convinced that it’s OP as you described. I even ran a few games with other VoC users on STG, and it didn’t make the run a breeze by itself (although a proper melee/hybrid Vet build isn’t underpowered anymore compared to the other classes so I can now carry on melee Vet too).
To be honest when I was reading the pre patch 14 notes I had mixed feelings. When I saw the stagger increase I was popping off. Perfect, I thought, that’s exactly what it needed. Then I saw the cooldown reduction and thought hmmmm, unexpected, probably unnecessary but I won’t complain.
Then I saw the Duty and Honour buffs. Twice the overshield and 50% more duration. Hold up, combined with the cooldown reduction doesn’t that mean crazy uptime on an already very strong effect (you could tank bursters with just the 50 overshield and iron will). That seems quite a bit too much was my reaction. Haven’t had a chance to play around with it yet but what OP has said lines up pretty much with what I was expecting reading those notes. The thought of stacking it with yourself and other Vets had not yet occurred to me. That was a time of blissful ignorance I guess.
I remember during an Auric with lights off, just me and a Commissar alone in the dark, a chaos spawn appeared, I had its aggro, and the Commissar had Voice of Command. Want to know when he used it? Not during the last horde fight, not when the Chaos Spawn appeared and I pulled aggro, but when I was downed. He didn’t even have the revive ability. Yeah, it was a team wipe.
It’s a strong ability sure, but it’s not a clutch ability, it either delays the inevitable or helps bolster morale (toughness) in a fight. So I think it’s fine.
Tideplayer’s Law:
As time spent playing grows longer and gameplay experience increases, the probability of a player calling a functional item or ability overpowered and demanding it be nerfed approaches one.
I’ve played my fair share of Vet and Zealot since patch #14 and in all of my games, it only happened once that said ability was OP, as the author claims. It was an Auric Maelstrom T5 with reduced Ability CD. We had a permanent “overshield” of +400 toughness, and that was with 3 vet shouts and 1 zealot chorus.
Besides that one instance, it never happened, that a shout vet made auric T5 any easier that it wouldve been noticible.
The synergy is very strong, yes, but I think its in a fine state, where it doesnt need to be nerfed
Honestly one of my favourite things about the Tide community is that long time players are most often just out here hoping to get their ass handed to them and don’t want easy wins:
I’m still a bit on the fence over this one, stacking with other players makes sense, being able to stack it on your own is a bit questionable to me. It really is VERY spammable now with the number of specials on higher difficulties.
Have you actually tried it yourself? Being snarky is fun and all but you could at least explain why you think it’s fine as is.
Stacking with other players makes sense. Imagine a psyker places a dome, and another psykers erases that one and places it at his location. The self stacking is whack.
It is spamable on higher difficulties if you get those special kills. I would rather take a look at Tactical Awareness than the CD of VoC itself. Right now the performance difference of a Vet can be huge depending on who kills those specials.
Yeah that’s pretty much exactly what I was saying in case that didn’t come across. It should just refresh if you use it again before duration end.
Fair point. Tactical Awareness would probably make more sense as a % based reduction TBH. Losing value on it if you take a node that increases cooldown time is pretty counter intuitive. At the moment for VoC it is basically a 20% cooldown per special kill which is pretty wild, up there with the crazy Zealot crit cooldown, but as you said can sometimes bite you if your team mates just keep getting the finishing blow on specials.
Yeah this loadout is so busted if you go for iron will, you don’t even need confirmed kill.
Though keep in mind there’s also a lot of those same anti-nerf players that don’t care at all about low difficulty balance, as if those players want to stick around after 30 ranks of walking behind players not ever engaging with the combat system.
