Nate Levy, Warhammer Online's Combat and Careers Team Lead, has written a dev diary entry that outlines the crowd control changes players can expect to see in patch 1.3.2. These changes follow the radii reduction on AoE effects and the introduction of the Resolute Defense ability in 1.3.0b.

To start things off, many crowd control effect durations will be slightly reduced. Also, some CC abilities will be moving to positions that make them more of a deliberate choice to obtain. "Many AoE CC Morales will shift from Morale Rank 1 or 2 to Morale Rank 3 or 4," Levy said. In addition, the distribution of crowd control abilities will be moved to defensive careers since DPSers bring damage to RvR. This shift is a long-term goal and will not be completed in one patch.

Lastly, the team is adding a new effect called "Stagger" in patch 1.3.2. According to Levy, "when you Stagger an enemy, they'll be briefly disabled and unable to move or take any actions, just like a Stun or a Knockdown, but with the critical difference that the Stagger will immediately break if they suffer any damage." You can read the full dev diary entry below.

As you've all seen over the past few patches, one of the major priorities of the Combat & Careers team has been looking into Crowd Control abilities and trying to reign them in a little bit.  Crowd Control abilities are a vital part of helping to control the flow and pace of combat, but for a while, they cut a little too deeply into our gameplay (and especially so at the high end).  We addressed one small part of this in 1.3.0b when we reduced the radii on AoE effects, including AoE Crowd Control, and introduced the new Resolute Defense ability.  In 1.3.2, you'll see our next set of Crowd Control adjustments roll out, so let's talk about those for a few moments.

We're tackling Crowd Control in 1.3.2 from a couple of directions.  I'll split them out and address each one individually, and hopefully this little glimpse into our development goals will help you gain a better understand of where we're coming from, and where we'd like to go.

For starters, we did a comprehensive analysis of all Crowd Control abilities in the game and worked out some more reasonable guidelines for durations and allocation.  What does this mean for you?  The general result is that you'll see many CC effect durations being slightly reduced, as well as some CC abilities moving to positions which require more of an intentional focus to obtain.  This means, for example, that many AoE CC Morales will shift from Morale Rank 1 or 2 to Morale Rank 3 or 4—a much more worthy position for effects that can completely turn a fight around!  Likewise, you may see CC abilities moving from base-progression positions into Mastery tree positions instead, representing a deliberate choice to make an investment towards obtaining them.

Secondly, another aspect of allocation that we're working towards as a long-term goal is to slowly shift the general distribution of Crowd Control to be more common on defensive careers—such as the tank archetypes—and away from DPS-focused careers.  One of the primary reasons for this is that, on the whole, DPS careers already have quite a lot to offer when it comes to RvR because they bring...well...the DPS.  They're the ones that end the fights, and that's always valuable.  The other side of that coin are healers, who are equally valuable for exactly the opposite reason—they’re there to keep your bleeding, limping, besieged self alive to fight another day.  Tank careers (and again, especially defensively-oriented characters) find themselves in an odd sort of position—the the combination of being very hard to kill and not outputting high damage means that enemies often simply pass them by to focus on "softer" targets instead, and only turn to fight the heavier tanks once the field is cleared of everyone else.  By starting to move more Crowd Control abilities toward the defensively-oriented careers, we give them a more imposing role in the fight and let them grow into the battlefield commanders that we want them to be.

This change isn't going to happen overnight—it’s simply too large of a goal to fit into any one patch (or even any two or three!).  I'm not talking about production constraints or time concerns here, either; we want to make this shift a gradual change instead of a sudden plummet, for several reasons.  The primary motive is so that we can assess the impact of each smaller set of changes before we move on to the next ones, which lets us make sure that we're always moving in the right direction and that we can make course adjustments when necessary.  You'll be seeing the first steps toward this goal coming in 1.3.2, and I hope that you'll all agree with the direction we're going.

Finally, we did a specific review of all Knockdown and Stun abilities, and took a hard look at reassessing what their purpose should be.  These effects are obviously the most impacting and powerful of all Crowd Control abilities, because they often let you kill a helpless enemy who can't take any actions to defend themselves, and that's simply not what we want them all to be.  While it's entirely valid to use these tools offensively, we also want them to have a specific defensive and strategic purpose as well:  to temporarily remove a key enemy from the fight while you focus on alternate targets.  We determined that there needs to be a clear and obvious line drawn between which effects we intend to be used offensively and which we intend to be used defensively, and that lead to the final change that you'll see in this patch.

We're introducing a new effect called "Stagger".  When you Stagger an enemy, they'll be briefly disabled and unable to move or take any actions, just like a Stun or a Knockdown, but with the critical difference that the Stagger will immediately break if they suffer any damage.  We've gone through every player ability that's a Knockdown or Stun, and have done one of two things to it:  either it becomes a Knockdown (a clearly offensive tool which allows you to knock an enemy tail-over-teakettle and then beat them down) or a Stagger (which is now a clearly defensive tool to remove an enemy that you're not attacking).  Generally speaking, anything that remains or becomes a Knockdown will have a duration that is three seconds or less, while Staggers will typically have durations of up 9 to 12 seconds or so, assuming they're not broken early.  You'll note that I don't mention "Stun" anywhere in there, and that's correct, since we're removing it as a vague middle ground—the abilities in question will clearly and specifically be either Knockdowns or Staggers.

I know that I've dropped quite a lot on you, so I'll stop here and allow you to digest this for a bit.  I hope that this little bit of behind-the-curtain helped you to wrap your head around our intents and goals a little bit more.  We look forward to reading about your experiences once this is up on the Public Test Server, and as always, please keep in mind that the changes are also subject to further adjustments based on testing, so please be sure to give us your feedback!