The fights began with 9ish freeps (58+, all experienced and have fought in the past) vs 12 creeps (all but one were hard veterans that i've lead before). The freep group had one captain for healing with two burglers while the creep group had two warleaders. (these numbers changed later.. will get to that after the first engagements)
They had been fighting a bit before I got on so my impressions were a bit later as the fight progressed.
- Captain healing is very very significant now. Now you HAVE to shift targets when it's locked on for healing by a minstrel
- Dead... fast. They weren't exactly heavy in champion AoE, but when we had 4 reavers contact them at close range, they were all dead before the stun wore off. 3/4 of them were traited for 6.5k+ morale.
- On the other hand, those who lived could kill a hunter reasonably fast. Champions were a tough nut to crack but burgs got a lot squishier (but they hurt a lot too, had two on me). All of the freeps' "get out of jail free cards" made killing them a tough proposition and the ratio was around 5 of us for 1 of them.
- WL rez nerf hurt.. a lot. Maps are absolutely critical now to get back into the fight.
- Can the WL bubble be removed by a corruption removing skill? I had a fully bubbled reaver go from half health to zero (that's 3k) before I could land a subsequent heal.
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Stage 2: They picked up a minstrel and a few more (to roughly 12) while we added another full group with the significant addition of two high ranked weavers and another 2 warleaders with another 5 low levels in the wings (not in raid)
- Still very bloody, kill ratio when the fight went mass on mass was around 3 of us dead for 1 of them. If we could get them unprepared for us, we brought it back down to 1-1 or better if they broke early for EC.
- Weavers are extremely valuable now to keep something like a minstrel busy. Two weavers on a minstrel and it was a non-factor. Without the two weavers on it, whatever the minstrel decided to heal was going to live.
- Greenies and blues are meat on the table: We didn't incorporate them in our group but watched them just get detonated within a second or two. Not fun.
- The CC wasn't even funny. Fears, stuns, roots, the whole ten yards incapacitates everyone.
- Pretty much the only way to 'win' against an experianced freep group is to overwhelm them with at least a third more of high ranked, very coordinated creeps. At the same time you burn the freeps' cooldowns with a full attack and wipe (creep wipe) then you come back within 5 minutes to do it again before the cooldowns are back up.
Summary: Not fun. 1-1 creep to freep fights are somewhat viable it appears from all the reports, but as you scale up and the force multipliers begin, the viability of creeps goes WAY down the toilet.
On the other hand, killing 3/4 of the freeps then quickly taking EC and saying hi to the freeps who are coming back to EC was quite fun. But at that point with raid + non-raided we outnumbered them 2-1.
So far, I have not had any problems with the new expansion except with NPCs. They are the ones killing me the most since they hit hard and there are so many of them. Yesterday, I probably looked like a porcupine because I had so many NPC arrows in my hide. Hunter damage sucks and did in beta too. This one hunter had me down over half morale in about 5 shots with a Second Age Bow at 60th level. I had to hips and then I killed him once I got close enough.
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