Keep improvements

Heh, tricked you all!

Instead of any of the previously talked about topics I am going to talk about Keeps and how I feel they could be improved. Unfortunately I didn't go to bed till about 5am so...I may ramble.

Okay so as we all know keeps and as an extension Fortresses leave a lot to be desired, although I have no problems with leaving Fortresses as a vanilla zerg versus zerg objective. Please ...just a little more room to move around, a little less lag and possibly make it a little more obvious to everyone involved that unless you have wards your gonna take a bajillion damage?

Anyway, keeps.

Back when I played Tabula Rasa I was most disapointed by the keeps system, I honestly thought it was going to be more dynamic than it was, but instead it turned out that if you owned something it was yours and every 20 mins or so bugs attacked it.

Sigh. On the plus side though the walls were a lot lower, everyone had ranged weapons and just generally more went on, even though it was only an NPC attack.

I think this needs to be the case here, all of the attackers need to be able to get involved with something. Ranged are fine, they can blast away at the people on the floor, but melee gets the shaft unless the enemy gets reinforcements and the postern door needs defending or the oil is down and the door can be attacked.

My solution, make the whole thing more interactive, actually allow people to break through into the keep before the main door is down. An example would be reikland from the Chaos side.

At the south keep there is a crypt that you can actually enter and run around in, what if the door to it was locked shut and required some sort of dark blessing to open it.

Anyway, you could get the dark blessing from one of the centre BOs, a friendly zealot would appear at the Reikwatch BO when you took it saying something like, I was working on a ritual when order attacked and I hid. Anyway this zealot invites 6 people to join the ritual and they all end up with the buff, the zealot then dies permanently until the BO is next captured.

All well and good you might say? But why would I want to open the crypt gates? Well here's why at Scwenderhalle manor, the southern BO, inside the house and guarded by the sergeant, only openable by people not in combat is a secret passage that will take you into the crypt inside the outer walls. Anyone with the buff can now be inside the castle walls and run around.

Why not just implement the bypass defences that allows melee DPS to enter keeps? cause this is more fun and why would people even want to do this?

Well inside the keep would be a minor objective at the gatehouse where you could actually spend 5 uninterupted seconds opening the door from the inside, meaning that the defender (order in this case) needs to pay attention to whats going on.

This is intentionally powerful because it punishes the keep defender who cant also defend the outlying BOs. Even if they just defended one of the two.

You could have all sorts of similar things everywhere and tie in BOs as an important part of keep defence.

But why defend keeps rather than just heading off you might ask? Well here is the answer, firstly defenders should get a PQ where if they kill 100 attackers or so a couple of golden loot bags are thrown their way.

I also think that there needs to be a bigger bonus for holding onto a zone once you have it. Because with keeps and BOs being static VPs that means that once you have captured a keep there is no incentive to keep it because you know if you really want to lock the zone you just need to go get the keeps back.

My idea is that keeps are initially worth ZERO victory points but for every hour you hold them they add some up to like 110% of their original worth over 3 hours. I think this would make people more likely to defend them.

Just generally I think any and all of these changes would make the game more fun.

Just Kidding

Actually I wanted to talk to you guys about well actually I have two subjects I want to talk about and I honestly can't pick the one I want to do the most.

Gear Grind or my current spec...

Hmm be right back lemme go roll a dice or something.

I flipped a coin, it landed on its side.

I'll spend some time writing them up, also I'm on my laptop at the moment and it's really bloody inconvenient for getting screenshots when the game isn't installed on a computer I can use soooo.

I'll do the framework and watch this space for an exciting guide on what to do with a 1HD axe that has 55.1DPS and also I will tell you where to go...to get the gear you need to get the gear you need (this may be a bit of a rant, but its my blog and thats allowed)

Anyway, this post (and I guess the one before too) were really just to wish you guys a happy holiday and let you know I didn't die of explosive bowel haemohroids as a vicious rumor may have said.

I've Been Gone...

Hey guys, miss me?

I was going to make excuses about it being the holidays and me being busy and yadda yadda yadda, but to be honest I was at my computer most of the time I wasn't posting I just couldn't think of anything to write about. So I kinda didn't.

I'm now stuck with family over christmas and boredom being the single greatest motivator in life apparently, I have decided to write something.

Something.

Man I'm so glad that I got the whole blog post for today thing done.

Where have all the Bright Wizards gone?

You remember, not too long ago you destuction folks the over abundance of Bright Wizards?

Do you fondly remember the days where you were being burnt to a crisp in under 6 seconds?

What happened?

Well here's the thing, the bright wizards said they were all okay, everyone else disagreed and they got a slight nerf. Don't get me wrong they still dish out sick damage when a good player is using them and they have a healer. So now instead of 6 Bright Wizards a scenario we have a slightly more manageable 3 or 4.

What happened to the rest? Well here's my theory. KNoBS (or KotBS if you wanna be Mythically correct). That's right, the old Bright Wizards are mostly, not all, the type of person that sits down, figures out the flavour of the month class and rolls it. My theory is that KotBS is the new Bright Wizard, cause I'm starting to see more and more in T4 and they kick mine and any other melees ass without doing a damn thing. Reflected damage for the win.

I don't begrudge this and I realise its a new class and it will be balanced, why? Because Mythic unlike a few other companies I could name tries to balance all the other classes. Barring KotBS abd Grass is always greener syndrome. I think that the games class balance if actually very very good.

As a marauder I could probably do with a slight nerf to be honest, especially in the area of Terrible Embrace, 10 second cooldown? (but shh don't tell mythic that)

Healers on the whole lack damage, which is a pain when they are trying to solo as there are a lot of reports of lack of enough damage to burn down targets fast enough. Stick them with a DPS though and the two of them will go faster than double the speed the solo DPS would have gone.

My honest opinion is that the two sides are pretty equal, with Destro saying Order is more powerful and vice-versa. They are really rather different beats in some ways which I love and I think a big bonus over WoW where the two sides were esentially mirrors of each other.

I would say that Destro was slightly more organised, tactics wise two times out of three than order and I think this makes a big difference. But on the other hand Order seem to have a hell of a lot more crowd control than destro which means that we need the brains.

The game is suffering slightly from the lack of MDPS choices meaning that RDPS are more proliferant that MDPS or even tanks and they have a hard time of closing the gap, specially with the CC on both sides.

These really are just a rambling lot of thoughts on class balance at this time, take it or leave it but I would be interested to know your opinions on it.

Here Comes The Zerg

"Mass tactics", "Safety in numbers" or "This is just how oRvR is, right?" These are just a few this it is called, whatever you call it it is the tactic of massing together an army of a warband or two worth of people and using it to roll around the oRvR countryside in game smashing everything in its path under its wheels. Drawing more and more to it mass like moths to a flame.

Why do people mass together like this? All rushing around from one point to another trying to waste as little time as possible anywhere? Is it to find the enemy and put them into the grinder at the from of this behemoth? No.

And you may have guessed by now, that I am not talking about those organised zergs that do what a single overlord and master tells them. Instead I'm talking about the type of zerg that gives everyone their own ability to freely come and go and do as they please as long as they don't piss off any of their teammates too much.

So what are the attractions of the zerg? Well for one thing it means your very, very unlikely to get ganked. Safety in numbers. Secondly and undeniably, running blindly from Battle Objective to Battle Objective to Keep is a good way of getting Renown Rank and also the new oRvR influence. Any order you get will get to will be mown down and pushing forth the enemy infront of you, hacking at their knees and hearing the lamentations of their women without casualty one to yourself is fun. For a while.

After that, well it becomes more of a boost, you remember when you wanted to hit level 18 quickly so you got a level God-only-knows-what to come and boost you through and all the mobs were 7 levels ahead of you you knew if you hit one you would die? So you just followed this guy around mindlessly. Its a bit like that, I spent an hour at one point never leaving my horse.

Even the guys that are only doing it for loot are getting stiffed, apparently due to whatever system keeps are using the same people keep getting the gold bags, one guy I know has 6 in his inventory cause he has all he wants from them and he is hoping the contents might change at a later date. Someone else has the complaint that the WB leaders are lazy and they are missing out on loot due to everyone rolling need on items they want but can't use. Warband leaders won't kick them or enable Need on Use so the nice blue shoulder piece that is 2 times better for your Marauder? That just went to the shaman over there.

The thing is, that it isn't like there is a choice. You either zerg or your out of oRvR. Small groups, six to twelve man stuff have done a little here and there before suddenly the zerg shows up, takes over the keep you've been working the last ten minutes and claims all the loot bags for themselves.

If they aren't currently at a point and a small group is skirmishing further up the road at a point that is in the zergs crosshairs but they haven't gotten to yet cause they are still taking the keep down the road for example you will be called on it. People in the zerg feel that any BO out there belongs to THEM and only THEM, if you take what is there's then you are a thief and deserve to be blacklisted. It happens folks, if you aren't one of them then you are preventing them getting what they want.

So basically, the zerg is a faceless mass, that doesn't want anyone else interfering with THEIR game, are probably not having too much fun in their full WBs and bitch at anyone that tries to.

I sometimes wonder if the only people that get anything out of it are the people in /2 posting sarcastic remarks at the sheer idiocy of it all.

No Update

This is an update to tell you that today there is no update.

Instead I dinged 40 and you get a picture of a cute tapir.

Ch22

I hit Chaos Ch22 Reikland last night to finish off some quests, and up till now the PvE, barring some stupid mistakes or the odd badly timed wandering mob has been EZ mode.

Like I said, I hit Ch22 and got my ass handed to me, again, and again, and again. The mobs patrol, are R41, they all seem to be linked and it's a 15 minute ride back if you die! Along the road of doom! I felt like I had been repetedly analy violated.

Seriously it was like banging your head against a brick wall.

On the other hand, I did get my new axe, the Slasher, after about three and a half hours and it is awesome and I love it to bits, but only after I got a guildy to come help me out. (With the getting, not the loving!)

Annihilation Epic quest for a decent weapon ladies and gentlemens!

Pie Assassin

My post yesterday was a little pissy so I'm a little sorry about that, in place of that we give you today instead a man trying to complete his Heavy Metal quests and get the Pie Assassin title.

Four Trees

Okay, so I was happily grinding away by myself running around about to head over to KV to help out some guildies with something that quickly became relevant as you will see when my story is unveiled.

Destruction has been trying to lock Reikland for 2 days unsuccesfully and I think a lot of people had said stuff it its not gonna work, suddenly out of nowhere a Reikland Hills scenario pops and I'm like sure. Then get get back to what I was doing, about 10 minutes later we have locked Reikland. Having just hit R36 I did what any right minded person did when you have access to new content where you can make a difference, I caught a flight to Reikland and headed down.

Now I have no idea how many were in the zone but we went through that door like a knife through butter, mainly due to catching order on the back foot due to lots of activity in KV. We rushed in and this is the point where I started seeing lots of R13 IBs and such...

I practically walked into a wall of LAAAAG and ran towards the door. Where no one was, BIG MISTAKE.

You see the door was in fact not empty but had around 15 BWs standing in the front of it that were invisible until you were within 3ft or so of them, probably due to the huge numbers.

Now comes the even more fun part, my healers can't see me (I'm outside 3ft range and they can't select me any other way) I respawn and run back down only to lag out again. At this point the server crashed.

Five minutes later I'ts back up and I head back into the fortress zone which has reset to 60mins where I soundly trounce a couple of R9 IBs and a R13 Runepriest (what?) Sigh, the game lags out and is as bad as it was and to top it off some moron is spouting off about how only R40 RR50+ (all six of them) should be able to be in a fortress thing. I left and later heard that the zerg died to NPCs inside the fort due to lag.

This is appaling Mythic/GOA. I mean not only were we unable to take the fortress but it means we will never see the city. There must be something you can do about this cause every time the fortress comes up every monkey in chrisindom is going to decend on the place like flies on poop.

I've heard that Black Crag had exactly the same problem and Mythic hotfixed it the same/next day. Is GOA seriously so idle that they can't even copy code over into our client when there is a known issue and its about to be an issue?

Do you guys even play your own game on your own servers or do you just play on the US servers where they get decent service?

To be honest the fortress looked great, the fact that we were hitting them across two doors and there were warband roving around protecting/attacking squishies was fantastic, the fact it all happened in a slow waltz was not so fantastic.

RvR Lake PQ Contribution (Keeps)

Okay so, contribution in PQs in RvR lakes is bugged, this is bad. This is bad because it means that I'm yet to see a gold bag as I usually come either 13th or 33rd contribution and then roll lower again. This is despite whether I've spent the entire time dead on the floor, alt-tabbed out surfing the net or HAMMERING MY KEYBOARD as hard as I can to spam out Demolitions.

There is apparently this little doohickey of code that breaks ties, cause of the way that keep sieges work there are a lot more ties than in normal PQs. This causes this doohickey of code to come straight into play BREAKING the keep siege PQ and causing me to not get a gold bag.

Paul Barnett has released a video pinning all the blame onto the coders, saying the code wasn't meant to be there and that the code is craaazy. He looks trustworthy so I'll say we go with him on this.

The coder say it will be fixed soon.

Good times!

Sauce

Mutard

Patch 1.06 & You (the Marauder)

H'okay so rather than just theory crafting I specced back over to Savagery to try out all these new skills and after a day I've gotta say that I like the changes. Ill make specific notes under the notes made in the patch notes.

* Deadly Clutch: The Value of this debuff has been reduced to 50%. In addition, 25% of the value the target is healed for (after debuff) also hits the Marauder.

This works, shockingly. It's not exactly a nerf to the skill, but it does increase your survivability as long as your target is being healed. Do NOT rely on this to keep you ahead of your target, if he is being healed for 50% you are only being healed for 25% and he is still ahead of you in the healing game...just less so.

* Mouth of Tzeentch: This ability will now behave like a melee attack. Its damage will be increased by Strength, and it can be defended against like a melee attack. In addition it can no longer cause a disoriented effect without equipping the Insane Whispers Tactic.

Double fix on this one. I've not seen it disrupted and I've not seen it disorient.

* Rend: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.

This thing actually does some decent damage now, good to see it buffed as it was lacking.

* Tainted Claw: This ability will now be increased in duration by Ailments, not Cripples.

I actually thought this is how it used to work, fix?

* Wave of Mutilation: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.

Tried this out for the first time last night so no real comparison, but the damage seems pretty damned good.



Gut Ripper seems to more reliably proc the crit now as well but this wasn't documented

All in all its been a -slight- buff for Marauder, but I think that as I have thought, Marauder are a balanced class and will hopefully not be messed around with too much. Despite my usual geekish joy and guesstimating the best builds.

Patchs and Crashes

New patch today, will talk about it tommorow as I was involved in a car accident earlier today and am a little sore.

Wheelchair Access pt 2

Okay, so I made a comic a while back about the YOU ARE DISABLED message.

So anywyay, I posted it over on the UI forums on warhammer alliance and forgot about it pretty much, checked my site access logs the other day and found I was getting most hits for that page, doing some slight thinking I went back to the original post and found that it had created a little controversy.

Warhammer Alliance post

So the thread is now closed, off the front page and unable to gain me new page hits, oh noes.

On the plus side the enterprising ChaosInc has created a mod that actually changes the message "YOU ARE DISABLED" to something a little more Politically Correct.

The mod can be found here.

Heartless

If I seriously offended someone I'm part way between a sorry and a get over yourself, the point of the comic wasn't to offend but just to poke fun at something that I thought was funny.

oRvR

First things first.

Ding! R30/RR26

Just spending my time grinding and scenario-ing till I hit 31 and then I will start questing again.

Where does this all fit in? Well first to draw a comparison, I went into serpent's passage. It isn't a lot of fun as a R30 Marauder (Bright Wizards can suck me.) But more than that people's teamwork in there SUCKS, more than any other scenario I've played yet. There are no tactics, no healing, no focused DPS, no running the salvage part.

In contrast I found an alternate way to get renown and exp. oRvR with my guild. We went out both Thursday night and late last Friday night.

No screenshots I'm afraid but I would like to post what happened.

Thursday Evening:

We originally planned to do some keep siegeing but only actually had lost one keep to order, down in Black Fire Pass. We assembled a team at the warcamp of about sixteen strong men, all from our guild and headed down there and took it back with the only resistance a single Rune Priest who fell to our blades and flying dark magic much faster than my bloodlust would have preferred.

We recieved message that an order warband had decided to take Talabecland and High Pass, their impetuousness could not go unpunished and we swept down upon the area like bats out of hell.

Well we needed to get an idea of the situation before we sent a large, unwieldly party out through the snowy tundra of the area and our party sent out scouts, I and a witch elf were decided up and we sullied forth to find out foe, it didn't take long as they were camped up on the hill in the very centre of the area, equidistant between keeps and warcamps, a good spot for a fast defence of any objective but not, in itself a good defensive spot.

We reported back and held out stead, watching the large mass of enemy as our warband circled, unseen around the back of their ranks preparing for a push into the fleshy underside of their healers.

Our warband to the north shouted out their warcry and Akok'in evareh orrifice was heard throughout the Realm shouted lustily by our warriors as they charged south into the enemy. We picked out their most powerful casters first, crippling their ability to hurt us back and then their healers. It went perfectly and we started to push the rest of them back. Suddenly out of nowhere about 4 Witch Hunters appeared admist our ranks and Accused our shamans of heresy, as if they didn't know. The chase slowed as we held back to deal with the new threat, taking out the bastards with our entire arsenal of axes, spells and sheer power. The Ironbreakers, who obviously weren't as stout of heart as legend ran, trying to make their way back to the keep.

It was my time to shine, if you remember I was scouting and away from the main warband further south again. And I know when to stay my blade despite my bloodlust. If I know it will pay off for more in the future. So down came the dwarfs and elven Swordmasters, paying more attention to the horrors behind than the obviously safe terrain in front when I stepped out of a rock bashing the ground as hard as I could. Knocking the lot of them to the ground.

I charged them down alone as they were getting unsteadily to their feet and started in on the first, they all turned to me and I admit I thought I had mis-timed my assault and could feel the loss of blood beginning to effect me when the restorative magics began to course through my veins. The warband had arrived and made short order of the enemies.

My hand tires as I'm sure do your eyes and I will write the rest in a swift précis, we pushed north to those same dwarves beloved drinking spot in the Brewery and slaughtered the meagre defenders.

We took up defensive positions inside, certain that the order were alerted to their presence and spent many more long hours, till long past night had fallen defending the brewery and drinking ourselves into a stupor in turn.

They outnumbered us two to one, their power was greater than ours combined but through some simple tactical manouvers and the ability to work as a team we triumphed

One last story of a fallen comrade, a young one who was foolhardy. When asked for volunteers for scouting duty a young Disciple of Khaine volunteered, we cheered his bravery but told him he was not yet ready. He defied orders and went forth anyway where his bright purple robes and stupid face were discovered and shot through with tainted bullets by a Witch Hunter who he never saw. We have neither time nor place for those that defy orders for otherwise they become a liability such as this.

So anyway, I had so much more fun with the oRvR than I've ever had with any other part of the game so far, I like the fact that the teams are unbalanced and constantly changing and that the terrain changes all the time. I honestly think I prefer fighting for an objective or fighting between them to fighting for keeps as well.

I am glad to see that oRvR is on the up and up on Eltharion even before the majority of the oRvR changes promised. So you will find me doing as much oRvR as possible from now on.

And long may it continue.

BOGOF

So I was just running along the other day and suddenly out of nowhere I get this tell. "You buy gold?"

I was like, wow /rg but then I stopped and thought about it and thats the first gold seller I've found on the game since launch. So I sat down and thought about why. The major things I can think of are these.

Plenty of gold made. The basic is that you make a tonne of gold, my guild has an 80% tax rate and I still have more than enough for everything.

No real money sinks. What's a money sink? This is something that the game designers build into the game to keep gold levels low to avoid inflation. There are only two real gold sinks in this game though.

1)Flights
2)Healing yourself after you die

Both of these are very low cost monkey sinks though.

No real crafting. People don't seem to be levelling crafting for the sake of levelling crafting. You get the odd crafter and yes, they are dirt poor but on the whole crafting just isn't vital.

Renown Gear This is actually the biggest money sink in the game but I have put it seperately because it's not required you could just as easily ignore it entirely and end up with decent PvE gear.

So why do MMO developers put money sinks in games?

Well its a matter of supply and demand, if people have a surplus of money and a lack of anything to spend it on. it means that prices on the AH will escalate. People have more expendable cash, people can afford to spend more on items, people will ask more for items.

What does this mean for the population of the game? That everyone gets richer? Well not quite, it means that people that have been playing for ages will just keep racking up more and more gold that they have nothing to spend it on so they will be fine. Newbies however will end up with a huge amount of gold faced to buy anything that they want.

A big influx of newbies to the game will lower prices temporarily but this is unlikely to happen. But to be honest, like I said earlier, no one really crafts and you can get all your armor through questing so the newbies have no incentive really to twink out their chars through the AH. Meaning that they wont bother spending money and will level up just fine.

So I dunno what the game will be like 6 months down the road but I will be interested to find out what this means for the population.

PS: All of this adds up to no one needing to buy gold (at least at the moment) so we don't see any gold sellers and thats a pretty big plus.

Un-daily

It looks like not only have they allowed the people that missed quests for the Heavy Metal event to do them after the fact but they have now unlocked all of the quests for doing.

Gah! WTF? I was enjoying doing stuff daily and there were still enough people doing them on the day they came out that you could get a party together and go at it...

Sigh.

I mean, I can't even fathom why they would take away the camaraderieship that was being built from it unless they were doing it from the hypothetical 8 people that were going on holiday and wouldn't be able to complete it?

Pro Tip: You don't need to do all the quests either. If you do all but two you can get the BG/KoTBS lockbox!

Non-WAR Nowai OMG

Just found a video on youtube pretty sure that the guy designated "You" is my cousin. He does that seesaw thing for an act he does. Had no idea he had made an advert though.

A Letter (P?)

-It's running down my leg miss-

So Mark Jacobs and whatever marketing team he has reading the stuff he posts has released a "letter" to "Folks"

Am I a folk? Lets assume I am for the seconds and rather than just link you to the warhammer site Ill post the lot here for ease of reading and lack of alt+tabbing or whatever you do to get a new webpage. (Ctrl+T is my best bet looking at the number of Firefox users)

Ill comment on it as I go along in Bold

Folks,

Over the last few months I’ve spoken about our continued focus on improving our open RvR systems. While we have taken some major steps in the last month, we believe that there is much more we can do to encourage people to take part in oRvR throughout the entire evolution of their character(s). Over the next few months we have some very exciting changes and additions taking place. Please note that as always, this does not represent everything that either we are doing or thinking about doing, just what we, as of now, plan on adding to WAR. Yay!

We have a number of major initiatives planned for oRvR in WAR. Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios. This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months.

First, we have created an RvR Influence system. This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR. This will be a complimentary system to our PQ Influence system. This system is already implemented in 1.1 and is scheduled to go LIVE along with that version in December.
I take it that 1.06 patch is now 1.1 or are they releasing the rearranged classes before that? oRvR Influence sounds like a bucket of awesome and was something I was talking to my guildies about the other day as a method I think would help increase oRvR participation.

Second, we want to improve the visibility that players have into oRvR and make it easier for players to get involved in the action quickly and easily. We have a number of wide-ranging changes going into our map and travel systems to allow players to better understand the state of oRvR in our game and also allow them to get to the action faster. We have already taken one step with putting a Rally Master in each Warcamp but we will also add the ability for people to have a second bind point to make it even easier for players to move around the maps. We will also make it easy for players to see where players from their Realm are engaging in oRvR, a Campaign HUD for all tiers and other improvements. We will also improve Tier-wide messaging about what is going on in Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Other additions include changes to the UI, in-game manual improvements, map enhancements, and a few other changes. How many times have you wished for a second bind point? In any game? This is a pretty huge boost to travel ability, I just hope that both bind points arent on the same 1 hour cooldown. All of this sounds like it will, assuming Order can drag their collective asses out of Tor Anroc and Serpent's Passage, increase oRvR just because people will know where they need to go to get some easily. If they fix the sllightly buggy Keep/OB ownership on the map that will be great too.

Third, we want to provide greater incentives to players to participate in oRvR. In order to accomplish this we will be adding additional layers to the questing system of oRvR including the addition of Keep Quests, “Daily Event Quests”, Chained RvR Missions, improve the initial Tome Unlocks and other oRvR-oriented Events. We will also improve our BO itemization. Our goal is to provide players with even more incentive for participating in oRvR than we have already. All of this sounds good, I said from the start of Live that Daily Event Quests would be awesome for PvP (sorry RvR) and anything that improves RvRship for the game is a win in my book (tome?). I probably won't pay that much attention to the tome stuff or Chained-RvR missions if that just means go to an RvR point, kill two players and then interact with an item, but anything that gets people in RvR lakes is a huge plus.

Fourth, we want to encourage guilds to take and control keeps, and we will continue our work on adding better rewards for Guilds who own Keeps as well as the addition of a system of Keep upgrades. This system will be added to the game in several stages beginning in the late winter. Can't wait to see what these are, holding a keep at the moment is a lot of money for a cupful of meh.

Finally, we will begin work on a global oRvR “Fame” system that will be tied directly to the Tome of Knowledge which will provide more rewards, titles, experience, etc. for participating and being successful in oRvR. This system will provide even more incentives for people to participate in oRvR than the current systems and one that fits nicely both with the ToK’s concept as “This is your life” as well as an additional advancement and reward system. I never play enough to build up the time to get a title that a billion other people already have. Meh.

Please keep in mind that these additions are subject to change and given the nature of these changes/improvements, they will not go LIVE until we have thoroughly tested them. However, these are crucial improvements to WAR and are being treated as such by the team. Please read, will be pushed back two patches just like the class changes.

Finally, I want to close this out with a brief explanation about the role that we believe that oRvR should play in WAR. It’s really as simple as this, oRvR should be a major focus for leveling, item gain, etc. in WAR. Some of the systems are already in place and in Tier 4, oRvR is alive and well. On other Tiers, however, oRvR is not being engaged in as often as we had hoped when we launched WAR. Our goal is to ensure that oRvR is the place where players can level the fastest, get the best items and overall, have a great time while doing it. It is supposed to be riskier, more challenging but ultimately, more rewarding than any other place within WAR. What is outlined in this letter are some of the ways we plan on making this happen over the next few months and beyond.

As always, we thank you for your patronage and support. We won’t let you down.

Mark

Well, as we can see they are telling us all the good stuff we want to hear and based on previous patch output (I always have a bloody patch when I log in) I imagine that all of this stuff will be done. I'm actually gonna say that it looks like the Warhammer team still love the game and are doing all they can to keep their players happy.

Hopefully they will make good decisions and we will get a great game out of it. The game is good at the moment but it still has its flat bits. It shouldn't take much to make it great.

Super Mutant

Recipe:
1 Kossar's Helm
1 Marauder Mutation
Shake Well
Serve lightly Chilled

Respec Again

Respeccing is cheap, baby.

I've done it again and respecced to a 0/7/18 Brutality build. Well thats where it will be in theory once I've finished.

WTF? I hear you ask. That is correct a build that uses Gift of Brutality but only has 7 points in it. Here's my reasoning.

Actually, lemme show you my proposed build first.

Brutality?

Now, I've put lots and lots of points into Monstrosity and the reason for this is that it scales better for damage than Brutality, but I need Brutality active to get the huge Strength bonuses.

I intend with this build to use Flail as my main attack and then Guillotine when they are below 50% health. It is very much a burst damage build.

The main reason for the need to be in Brutality spec rather than Monstrosity is Corrupted Edge, 160 Strength translates into roughly +32.0DPS on a skill. Waaaaay more than you would ever get by just putting points into the tree. Also Ferocious Assaults Str is increased by 75, which equals roughly an extra 15DPS more than filling out the brute tree. In addition to making Flail itself (a more versatily skill than Impale) more powerful.

The main advantage here is that loads of the Monstrosity attacks are buffed by the Monstrosity tree (obviously) but are still useable whilst using Gift of Brutality.

The Main ones I'm focusing on are Flail (damage anywhere anytime) and Ferocious Assault (more damage? more survivability? yes please!)

So my attack pattern with this setup would be.

(Just Before Combat)
Ferocious Assault

(Just entered Combat)
Thunderous Blow
Pulverize
Flail
Flail
Flail
Flail

(When they hit 30% health)
Guillotine
Flail
-Dead-

The question here is why I don't use Guillotine earlier, well the thing is that a healer has morale heals and if they see a huge drop all of a sudden they tend to use it so I like to try to kill them with Guillotine so as there isnt a heal pulled out of the healers ass at the last minute.

But yeah, using Gift of Brutality and Monstrosity Spec seems, with a little light theorycrafting to do more single target damage than Brut/Brut or Monst/Monst

Co-ord-in-ate?

Okay so a couple of weeks ago? That little time? I was looking for a new guild after the people that I came to this game with quit to go back to WoW eugh, pech, eeuch. Actually don't get me wrong, I think its a fantastic game, technically but it seems to lack some soul and I don't want to go back.

Anyway, I thought at the time, you know it's gonna be fun for once to just be a normal member and not to have to worry too much about the upkeep of the guild. Well fast forward to today, well last night. I guess I didn't keep my head down quite far enough and I've been offered a Guild Assist position for, (and at this point I completely forgot the position title for about 10 seconds) Event Co-ordinator, to be honest I took it on a trial basis but I'm a bit of a pushover and you just know that I'm gonna accept. Not least because these guys are great fun to play with and I want to see them do well.

So yeah, Guild Event Co-ordinator...guess I need to find out what there is to do in WAR other than just levelling then!

Wheelchair Access

Heavy Metal Change

It is I, the midnight blogger! (GMT) ...also its 1am, but still its late, and Im tired and I apologise in advance for splelnig mstikeas

There has been a lot of QQ about this on the forums, to be honest Ive not really bothered to find out what the gripe is, I've had a good night and thats how I like it.

Live Event Updates

* By popular request, players will now be able to complete previous daily tasks for the Heavy Metal event. A task will continue to unlock each day and remain open until the end of the event allowing players to complete all the tasks at their convenience. Please Note: If you notice an apparent loss of credit for any previous days you have already completed simply exit the game entirely and log back in to correct this issue.

* Reikland Factory: Improvements have been made to potentially increase the rate at which the scenario launches.

So anyway, It looks like you can now do the event quests...whenever, its not just limited to the day its released (Ill get back to this in a second) also it looks like people have been listened to and have gotten the Scenario to queue much faster, this is a very positive change and I don't even mind going into RF more often cause its a bit new and I enjoy it.

Now my main point, and whilst my goblin shaman friend Sully is over the moon about it I am sure (cause his computer wasnt playing nice last night and we failed the 3 PQ stages by a minute when the Live Event updated at 2 minutes to Midday instead of the Midday we were expecting. Yes I know we were cutting it fine but meh.

Anyway I know there are people over the moon about this change that allows Live Event questing anytime...but whilst I aren't really annoyed Im half English and its like a birthright to have a moan.

I was enjoying the fact that everyone had to do the quest on the day it came out as it gave it a little urgency and people were actually forming full parties for the purpose of doing the quests. People had a purpose and were rushing to get it done. Now I assume they will just do it when they get round to it...probably in the course of normal questing.

Ah well, like I said I'm on the fence over it and possibly being a bit elitest cause I already had the three quests and couldn't really see any reason I wouldn't be getting any of the others but yeah, I'm glad that others won't be missing out on the chance of a Blackguard (or KotBS if there are any order lurkers)

Maybe just adding a couple extra quests to the end, so that you could miss a two of days but still get full influence.

Glad that Mythic (GOA?) are looking at feedback and changing the game on the fly still to help out their players, long may it continue.

Night night

Day Three, Live Event

Okay, so I did the live event earlier and there have been a few questions asked in /1 about it so here's how its done.

Sign up for the Reikland Factory scenario and when it pops jump in.

From the starting area go over bridge and on the left behind the pillar is a quest giver.

Accept the quest The Raven's Eye from the quest giver.

Run around to the four objectives, shouldn't be too hard, in the first 30 seconds everyone seems to pretty much just ignore everyone

Once you have all 4 objectives scouted. Return to the original quest giver before the scenario ends otherwise your gonna have to rejoin.

If you really feel like it it looks like the quest is repeatable so feel free to do it as many times as you like.

What's A Little Orc Porn Between Friends?

Something In The Air

So this new Live Event is pretty good. The quests themselves aren't great but they seem to have given people a purpose to do things amd there is just a slight atmosphere of camaraderie. People are joining up, doing stuff together a lot more and this is how I would love to see the game normally. This was of course a lot more noticeable during todays Complete Three PQ Stages than yesterdays Scenario but that was to be expected as PQs require teamwork.

Anyway, I hope they do something like this after the patch that gives people reason to work together daily, as much as I hated the WoW dailies I loved yesterdays Live Event daily and I really hope that they continue in that trend.

Anyone else out there trying to unlock Blackguard or KotBS early?

Aggro Wut?

Game is down again, will be trying again lat.

So anyway I was fresh out of ideas on what to talk about today so I went and surfed the friendly warhammeralliance forums and found a post on PvE aggro. So I thought I would lift my response directly from that and post it here.

Having played both MDPS and a Tank I've got this to say. MDPS have always seemed to take aggro off me more than any other class, possibly I just notice it more due to MDPS ability to get instagibbed without the mob having to run elsewhere. Anyway here are my tips.

Start slow, aggro usually builds a lot faster than DPS damage but it takes a good 5 seconds to get solid aggro, more if youve got multiple mobs. So I will always, if I engage at all in those 5 secs, only use auto-attack. Then start using abilities.



Ask your tanks for a guard, it will take some of the aggro off you and add it to themselves, most healers wouldn't want to stand next to a tank in PvE and are probably way outside the 30yd guard range. So don't waste it on them and ask for that guard on you, they can only say no right?

Don't expect /assist to work cause he will be tabbing between all the mobs he is tanking, it will either

a) be obvious which he is tanking cause its the only mob, or
b) not be obvious at all which he is tanking, in which case /assist the main assist. What do you mean you don't have a main assist?

Tanks make a terrible main assist, why? I hear you ask. I'll tell you. A tank needs to keep fairly even aggro on all mobs, possibly slightly more on the one you are going to kill first, why is this? Because healing creates aggro and if he doesnt hit every mob then every mob the tank isn't hitting goes after the healer.

So who makes the best main assist? MDPS because he has to do the most manouvering to get into position for doing the damage RDPS can hit pretty much hit everyone from everywhere. Same sort of theory as moving at the same speed as the slowest hiker. Healers are right out unless you want to be targetting the tank half the time. So that may mean you as a marauder!

So stay calm, choose a target and start hitting it (slowly at first), try to point yourself straight at it so that the tank can easily see which mob to tank most and then just DPS it down and move to the next.

Good luck and have fun!

PS: Remember, You can't do any damage if your dead!

Try LAT

This LAT?

What Ophtamology has to do with anything I have no idea.

1.05 Live

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Patch 1.05 is live!

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Patch 1.05 has a lot less content in it than originally expected.

Warhammer Onli...oh screw it.

Okay so as everyone now knows none of the class changes have been made in 1.05 and have been pushed back to 1.06 with no indication to when that will be, I'm actually not that cheesed off about that, means that they shouldn't be introducing accidental bugs. Anyway, Heavy Metal is LIVE! This means that we get to see the new tank classes soon. I was really looking forwards to doing this so I could get Blackguard early and try it out.

Following information may be cack as I'm still downloading the afformention Warhammer O....1.05 but anyway.

Looks like I may be disapointed, as far as I can tell you need to do every quest thats assigned over a shortish time period to fill your influence bar. The first quest according to war-europe is to take part in the Reikland Factory scenario which is a T4 only scenario. So this event is already only for the 20% of the games population that are at R31-40.

So unless I can get 8 levels in the next 10 hours I guess I will just have to wait with the rest of the proles till Blackguard gets released fo' reals. (Oh and I'm afk for at least 6 of those 10 hours.)(Pointless task is pointless)

EDIT: I'm an idiot, right below the sentence that said the scenario was in T4 Reikland it says that its available to all players of all levels. What's this level they speak of? Rank, marketing people you should at least be getting that right!

It's Win

What a Brute

So, I have been speccing as Monstrosity, purely because another marauder in my guild was using it and getting huge numbers. I find though that the downsides outweigh the positives.

Downsides
You ain't never gonna kill anyone
You need to put yourself waaaay too close to a huge number of people for it to be any use

Upsides
Lots of pretty numbers!

So...I decided to take a look at the three different trees and decided that I quite liked Brutality, don't get me wrong I still have a special place in my heart for Savagery and will most probably spec back there at some point at R40, but at the moment I think it requires more teamwork than the average PuG will be able to supply.

So Brutality it is then and here is the spec I came up with. My Spec

Obviously this is a R40 setup and Im currently only R21, but everything scales down.

Tactics
Corrupted Edge Because seriously, who doesn't want an extra 320 Str and Int
Unstable Convulsions Because this apparently removes HoTs and any other advantage they have.

Abilities
Guillotine This is a huge damage boost at the point where healers usually figure out whats going on finally
Mutated Aggressor This is going to give me 25% damage? Sign me up!
Concussive Jolt This one may seem a little strange with the others but a two second knockdown is pretty powerful, specially if you are trying to chase them down, I'm more than happy jumping between different mutations as the need arises but this one doesn't even require me to leave the brutality tree. A win/win as far as I'm concerned.

So yeah, there is my 0/19/6 Marauder tree, hope it works and hope it doesn't change too much whenever this 1.05 (1.06 now?) patch arrives.

CSR Cunning, Snappy, Retorts

Okay, possibly I went a little OTT with the title but I had cause to call out a CSR last night cause of a problem with the Stalker's set quest (Greenskin section) ya know the ones where you kill 20 of an enemy and then you get a set piece item, anyway I figured I'd get this set.

Anyway I went down to the Greenskin area to after picking up the DE and Chaos ones and found I couldnt accept the quest yet, looking online I apparently need to be level 27 to get the quest and the quest reward was level 20. I called a CSR!

Four minutes later I get a "Do you have a moment to spare?" message and I'm like, yeah sure.

He can't do anything about it but say he will mention it to QA department, meh whatever, figuring Ill stay in his good books I comment on his speedy reponse with mention that he was a Super-CSR. (There is a reason for all this ramblin I'm getting to the point) Any more questions? Just if you can cause the realm queues to go any faster.

Here was the response.



Unfortunately I was drinking at the time and may have got a slightly wet monitor.

So this is me signing out and saying, be nice to your CSRs cause they live in constant fear of the Nurgle Pigs.

Ding!

Ding! Endless levels of Nordenwatch, Mourkain Temple and not nearly enough ORvR and I'm here at the halfway mark, I've got my horsey and I'm ready to ride!

Commisar has hit Rank 20 and is off getting himself pissed!



Actually this is really an excuse to announce that GOA have finally released the Realm War page. They appear to be fairly up to date, although it would seem that Rank and RR are only updated immediately after they go up a level.

Its actually impossible to link directly to a character so if you really want to see Commisar then

Go to
Put "Commisar" in the Character Name box
Put "Eltharion" in the server box and hit Search



Up should pop Commisar with all his stats and figures. Isn't he a handsome, moody devil?



No idea if this works for your characters, you would sort of hope so.

It also doesn't take into account any stat buffs from tactics or, apparently I've heard from guildies, set bonuses (bonusii?)

Again though, like the queue system which I posted about earlier. This is a new system and I'm sure it will be built upon as they claim it's still in beta.

Bye Bye Mourkain

I'm still waiting to see how this is going to shake out but it looks like Mythic have made a big change to the queue system and instead of it dropping you straight into the first one to fill every time (Nordenwatch/Mourkain/TA/Serpents) it now holds off so that those of us that want to join another one get to.

This means that queue times are now about 4 times as long, which Im sure will get hotfixed sooner than later cause I can only imagine the whine this will cause when people catch on. But it also means that I am actually yet to see Mourkain at all today!

This does mean I'm seeing a lot more Phoenix Gate, which may not be such a good thing.

Ah well I'm not sure at the moment how it will work but I'm looking forwards now to T3 that it doesn't look like an endless TA-fest!

Edit: Late edit but I managed to miss this on the War-Europe site page

RvR

Based on player feedback we have adjusted the amount of time between launches on the following Scenarios: Tor Anroc, Mourkain Temple, Serpent’s Passage and Nordenwatch. We will continue to evaluate and adjust the amount of time between the specified scenario launches based on player feedback.

Skill over Style

I was sat here the other night and thinking...ya know, I do that sometimes.

Anyway what I was thinking about is these wards from gear and how you need a specific set of gear to take on the next "tier of R40 content" this isn't so different from some other MMOs I could mention and I don't actually have a huge problem with it, specially as you can mix and match PvE and PvP gear to make the wards active. The discussion on gear treadmills has been thrashed out over and over elsewhere.

Anyway, my slant on the issue is this:

Wards = Less actual stats on gear = Closer gear between every at R40 = More skill required rather than gear = Better RvR

Well played Mythic!

Healzor

Just a quickie today.

I forgot to mention that the afformentioned attack cycle that I use for Bright Wizards works just as well, if not better, on a healer with a few modifications.

Runepriest/Archmage

3a) Hit them with Touch of Instability, this will deal damage if they try to damage you and mitiage their healing somewhat.
3b) Tainted Claw, this reduces the healing that they do to themselves by even more. I also use this second so that it lasts 10s due to the Affliction from Touch of Instability
3c) I actually like to use Rend here to mitigate the HoTs so I get it up to the 3x ASAP.
3d) Spam Flail

For a Warrior Priest its exactly as above but I will slip in Touch of Rot as well. Hopefully they will pretty much kill themselves with the combination.

Hope this helps with all your healer killing need.

It Burns

Destruction hate them, Order love them judging by the stupid number I come up against in every scenario. They are overpowered, no doubt whether due to bugs, bad planning or every one of them being played by MENSA champions I don't know. (I have my suspicions though)

You dont need to be an afformentioned MENSA candidate to know I am talking about Bright Wizards.

We all know them to be bringers of fiery, burny death. My point is that this needs to stop and if you play a marauder then you may be able to help!

I'm Rank 17 now and have been using the same tactic for a little while and thought I would share.

First of all we know that Bright Wizards are incredibly vain and like to see as much of their character burning things as possible and want those numbers as big on the screen as possible. This means they stay right close zoomed in on their character and can't see behind them easily.
Secondly we know they are allergic to the front lines and prefer to stand behind their healers.

The best way to kill a Bright Wizard in my experience is to get the drop on him, as a marauder we don't ponce around in stealth so we can't just run up to him and then appear out of nowhere in his face like those ever so sexy Witch Elves.

All this tells me that the best way to kill a Bright Wizard is to jump 'em from behind. Yes, I know that it may take an extra 10 seconds to take the long way round, but hopefully with sprint you will suprise them.

So anyway you've jumped them and they have hopefully panicked, run away from the keyboard and collapsed in a heap on their basement floor. Sounds likely I don't think, unfortunately despite Commi's scary beard.


So anyway.

1)Nearly forgot, make sure you have Gift of Savagery active.
2) Run up behind them with Charge activated, it closes the ground fast, before they can react.
3) ???
4) Profit

and that is how you kill a Bright Wizard, wait what? You wan't me to elaborate on point 3)??? hmm...okay

3a) Hit them with Touch of Instability, combined with the damage they do to themselves already it racks up a lot of self damage when casting spells.
3b) Debilitate, I stick this in second so that if they do fire cage me and run away Ive got a little extra time to pile in some ranged damage.
3c) If there is a healer around hit them with Tainted Claw to reduce healing on them.
3d) Spam Flail

Okay, if the Bright Wizard does manage to get away from you whether due to fire cage or some other interference keep facing them and switch to Gift of Monstrosity at which point I want you to spam Demolition on them till you can catch them again. If you see them trying to power up a fireball then now is a good time for Mouth of Tzeentch (it's worth it on the off chance it might work)

Anyway, by now one of you should be dead. If it's them then feel free (if there aren't any other targets nearby) to do a little victory dance, I prefer fist bunched with wrists facing forwards and then make little circular motions with them. If it's you then you know you aren't going to be ressed cause your far too far away from a healer for them to care so hit respawn and try again!

Anyway, hope this all helps with the bane of the Earth that is a Bright Wizard.

Today Is The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Hey, I'm Skips your friendly neighbour hood bloggerman and this is my debut into the blogosphere. I can see for miles up here!

This is Commisar, he's my Marauder. Standing here with a big cheesy grin for the photo. Say "hi" Commisar.



Marauders aren't very friendly. Specially when you make them pose. At the moment Commisar is level 16, I also have a level 21 Black Orc and a level (7?) Shaman called Mulligatawnay. These guys are all on the Destruction side (obviously) of the Eltharion EU server. I have other characters on the Order side of Dragonback Mountain too.

My guild is called Pyran, I think its some sort of element or something, I should really check. Here are some of them.



Don't they look like happy fun guys? I've been with them at least 5 days now!

I will be sharing with you, for at least six months, I hope, my thoughts on Warhammer in general. Why six months I hear you ask? Well it is simple really, I accidently bought six months subscription instead of three, it was 3AM and I in no way, shape or form should have thought myself capable of handling a debit card.

So yeah, six months subscription, is a go! What do you think about that Commi?



Thank you Commi!