What the Hell Happened!?!? Part 2

Two weeks  ago I posted on my concerns about the new attitudes of Gorfang. https://mrmeh.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/what-the-hell-happened/

Wow, what change happens in a half a month. We go from shallow belligerence to non-existence. There is no one left. The server is practically empty. I guess we are seeing the first issue with basically giving out renown and gear. You can only make so many RR80s in 2 sets of Sovereign before you get bored and move on.

I have spent the last weeks in and out of the server. Chiming in to run SCs in the new Eternal Citedal and basically sit there and wait 15 minutes between pops. So after about 3 SCs in 2 hours, we’d all take nice extended breaks. Some of us, mostly spending it on Order Badlands. Which is apparently not an uncommon fad amoung the majority of big names on Gorfang. Both sides alike are shipping out to try and find new and bigger action.

Just among my guild, 3 of the top RR80s on Gorfang have just decided to practically hangup their toons and dedicated all their time on Badlands now. All 3 were in T4 within a week, with RR to match. With that encouragement, many other guildmates are now spending more than just off time leveling toons there as well. And why not? You go from boredom and the same old premades day in day out, to running toons and T2 that have more action than you can keep up with. Do you know how fun Order T2 is, with a full premade of former  RR70+ Destro Toons? Hilarious. Even funnier when you get beat.

Not so much this weekend. Things turned ugly for both. Badlands encountered massive populations on Friday and Saturday, and if you are on that server, I’m sure you can relate. Personally, within 4 hours of trying to play on Badlands, I probably spent a good 1 hour of that at my character selection screen, and that’s mainly because I choose a zone and refused to move and queue. Reliving the opening week was not a refreshing memory. Sigh.

Worse yet, is when you finally said “fuck this shit,” and went back to Gorfang, you sat there bored out of your wits waiting on Scenario pops. It was a horrible weekend to say the least. Not at all a good one if you thought you were going to achieve something.

On the new scenario, I’m torn. I like the none flag SCs, but I wasn’t a big fan of this one. On Gorfang it was basically a test of who’s premade was better setup. Consistently, we duked it out for the full 15 minutes, not one kill on either side. The problem with the design is 2 fold; the map was too small. No room for kiting, and no matter where you stand, you are within your tanks guard. In the lower tiers on Badlands (when we could get in), it was a bit more fun. There was Tor Anroc punting style fun and ridiculously easy melee kills. Even in T4 Badlands I had fun. It was so consistent that both sides would enter without one healer on either side, that it gave me an idea of an extremely fun SC idea: No Healers.

Anyways, I can see where the SC is liked to certain degrees. I think it needs to be a bit bigger and eliminate the center spawn. Having a permanent premade duking ground is a decent idea. Not so much fun if you aren’t though. Not unless the other side is not one as well. What are the chances? Maybe make it permanent, but only for 6 man queuers.

This weekend definitely could have been better. I have one server that’s dead, and another that you can’t play on, and no idea what to do. How many others are in my boat? I’m thinking more than Mythic would like to see. So, I have no idea what happened.

Warhammer Online: Suggestion: PvE Chapter Buffs

Let’s face it. This game is a PvP game. Those that came here for PvE quickly were frustrated. Not that there is anything wrong with the premise, it’s just not as rewarded, updated or as sought after as the real meat and potatoes of the game, RvR. That doesn’t negate that fact that 2/3rds of every map are still PvE, nor does it negate that it is all still working and fun PvE to do that’s just sitting there with cob webs. It’s just that the Chapter Based PvE is not as rewarding as PvP, that’s the simple matter of the fact. If you are in T1 and T2, the best XP you can get is from the Scenario Win XP. The best way to level and get gear is PvP. And that’s awesome. But ….

What if I don’t want to PvP, right now? Or what if I have no one to PvP with? Or what if there is so much PvP, I can’t even load on my screen what the hell is going on and rather not be apart of the cluster fuck right now?

Before when LoTD was rank 25 and above, it killed T3’s action. If everyone loves PvP so much, why would that happen? Because, even though I want to own your face, sometimes I just want to zone out, kill some mindless shit (grind), get a chance at some nice loot, and make some XP. My whole big and bad life of RR40 to RR80 s going to be RvR. Let me have some PvE fun while XP is still my focus. And it’s not that we can’t use the chapters, it’s just that with all the RvR buffs and better drops combined with the addition of medallions, mindless PvP is just too rewarding to pass up. I want gear, and I want useful gear, then that means I want RvR. Which turns to RvE.

I personally loved the Chapters, the PQs, the rewards in the beginning. But I’m one of the originals. That’s all we knew when we came. SCs were broken in T2+, no one could figure out how the keeps worked, and battling in skirmishes made little sense. The rush was Rank 40. We grouped for PQs, we solo’d storylines, we’d show off our Epic Quest Weapons, and we show-off our Titles. I wonder what percentage of the population now even knows what the fuck an Epic quest is. The point is, PvE is fun and you (Mythic) actually built a fun PvE story line thing idea that’s quite neat. I’m not quite sure why the critics didn’t like it. I guess if the NPC doesn’t offer to have sex with you, the PvE sucks (I really didn’t like Dragon Age, if you couldn’t tell).

My suggestion is simple (simple in blogger brainstorming, you know the kind of simple that actually take 2 months of rigorous programming to implement), just buff the chapter rewards and up the drop rate of gold bags in PvE PQs.

The first part is in giving Chapter Influence Item Rewards a nice big buff.

Currently most chapters have a first bar that grants a baloney sandwich. Horay a +2 willpower talisman for a Chapter 6 reward. Really? A complete idiot could accidently sneeze a +10 talisman, what’s a +2 going to help me do? It’s not like I can take it and throw it at an enemy. The idea of potions or talismans isn’t a bad idea. What if we made them more close to the blue talisman stats that people are making in these ranks. That way the talisman is useful to the apothecary player, and the potions are useful to the talisman maker. For example; early T2 talisman makers should be able to make a blue +13 talisman. Maybe that should be a reward choice for Chapter 5’s influence. 

The second is a green (T1) or blue (T2+) mediocre item. It kind of like the first reward, it takes up a slot in my bag before I sell it. I’m glad I spent 45 minutes grinding PQs for it, that 50 bronze was awesome (heavy sarcasm for all those new to the Mr. Meh suggestion articles). The idea of blue items here is great, but the stats need a bit of a boost to make them even equal to the Green Renown Gear people can just go buy for cheap. A Blue R22 Belt from a chapter is not even near respectable in stats to the RR16 Green Conquest Renown Belt. They just need a simple boost. Make them real blue stats for that Rank.

The third reward is usually another mediocre blue item. Same premise here, it really needs a stats boost. And to that effect, it should really be a purple item. 

T4 PvE is a prime example of how underpowered the Chapter Rewards are. The last chapter rewards a rank 34 blue item. You need to be 38 ot 39 just to survive the chapter, what the hell is the point of a 34? These pieces shouldn’t be overpowered, but really, there is no need to take away from the great design that was originally built. If someone wants to Chapter PvE, it should grant at least something useful in their progression, not something beyond mediocre.

The second part is obtaining PvE Mythic Sets. We have these sets (Carnage, Mayhem, Ruin, Keeper) that we barely see. PvP gear is practically handed to you. You can easily get Medallions and Drops from simply just being a part of the PvP. Do enough keeps, you’ll get your golds bags. Even if you don’t you’ll have enough Crest to buy them. PvP is basically little league, even the losers get a trophy. On the other end of that spear, in PvE, no one wins. Grind the PQs all you want, that Gold Bag isn’t dropping. Also, good luck finding 2 or 3 people in PvE to go kill the single Hero over and over to get your Boot drop.  

Why not just add all the those PvE set item to the Gold Bags in the PQs? As well, why not just increase the gold bag drop rate of each PQ. Particularly, the Hard ones.

Or … Maybe even introduce a Currency System for PvE. Not that the bags in the PQs are useless, just that 5 crest so that my PvE grind is more useful, would be nice.

Just another idea. Gives some props to the carebears. They are subscriptions too.

Warhammer Online: The New and Improved Meh DoK

The original Meh DoK article is here.

There are some big oversights I made. As I spent more and more time with a great deal of RR80s and some really decent players, I got more and more insight to why I needed to redesign the Meh DoK. Essentially, what I built before is basically the way I always wanted my Warrior Priest, and there in lied the design flaw. I was building the DoK to not only conform to my WP desires, but then I overlooked possible other advantages due to having the blinders by playing the mirror class for so long. Not that it was a bad design, but the point is to always improve. And so I think I greatly have.

Below is my revised article, hope you enjoy!

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The Disciple of Khaine is a very versatile class. In many class cases, being able to use the full aspect to anyone of your mastery trees is simply not possible. Either that tree was nerfed, it’s broken, not popular for PvP, or just weak. You can take the mirror to the DoK as an example, the Warrior Priest. By far a very formidable foe and friend. It’s a class that is built to heal a group like it was 2 healers in one and is tough enough to tank about most foes, even in numbers. Give him/her a great weapon however, and they become free renown speed bump to a destruction rapefest.

The Warrior Priest in Comparison

In the past, I’ve built 3 level 40 WPs. One to renown rank 72, one to 45 and another that never surpassed 20. I’ve done quite a bit of studying and experimentation with them. In the end, the WP has all of one great use, mass group heals. With some really high level gear and some pocket items, maybe more. But as for being able to follow another path other than Salvation (full cast heal spec) on a Warrior Priest before the RR70, is a likely way to be greatly appreciated renown to Destruction. In my frustration of not being able to have my Grace (melee heal and effect spec) I went and took some time to try to see if I could with the DoK.

The DoK alone is born with more strength and abilities to kill. As you rank up, knowing your Warrior Priest’s paths backwards by heart, you would notice the great differences. You have blessings that damage an opponent while healing your ally. You have tactics that bless you with amazing striking capability, but yet lack all the defensive tactics granted to the WP. The result is, the Disciple actually has the capability of specializing in anyone of the 3 paths, and probably excel in anyone of them. Ultimately, because of gear and groupings, the Disciple generally only has so many choices before RR80. However they tend to lean to certain focuses depending on the user and really the renown rank of course.

The Young Disciple

Before the DoK can develop into a mature center point, once achieving Tyrant or Warlord gear, the Disciple can feel almost as though it’s a teenager trying to figure out it’s role. Leaving T3, most characters are probably full Devastator. Unfortunately, this armor set gives most players the wrong idea in what they should play as. Up until T4, the melee DPSing fiend known in T3, the DoK was a nightmare for any opponent. A nice boost in strength with a 5% critical bonus, might have put a level 27 Slayer in his place, however even a rank 40 Runepriest can make short work out of a sub40 melee DoK. Despite what the armor may tell you, if the number at your name is under 40, you probably shouldn’t be holding 2 swords. The likelihood that you will get lucky and find other enemies under 40 alone, are slim to none. I personally tried it, just to see. The critics are correct, this setup in T4 is most definitely the notorious FailDoK.

Fortunately, the next armor set, Annihilator is a great example of a useful setup for a premature DoK, the HealDoK. By RR32 and even with unlucky rolls, any DoK can go buy the boots and gloves, get a nice Willpower buff, respec their renown, talismans and mastery into Willpower and Dark Rites. This will however still be a slight struggle, as this DoK is unable to make good use of any tactics. The shield proc tactic requires a heal crit, which most likely a sub40 DoK does not have. And a very useful …. tactic helps regenerate Soul Essence with incoming strikes but you have to atleast 37. Unfortunately, the premature time between RR31 and Rank 40 is a very difficult and un-specialized time for the DoK. Keep watering (grinding in LoTD) it will be short time in comparison to 80.

The HealDoK is what the masses want. You will be liked. You will be bored, but you will be liked. Spamming your group heal will definitely help and grant results. This path does get more useful, and with equipment and RR, the HealDoK is most likely to find the good premades for SCs. The struggle will be gear. For some reason the next two stepping-stones for gear were imbalanced by Mythic. Conqueror is a DPS set, and then Invader is an even better DPS set. It’s Sentinel and Darkpromise that are the heal sets; both of which are only in Dungeons. In all actuality, Mythic should have made the Darkpromise the Invader, so that it was Devastator (DPS) > Annihilator (Heal) > Conqueror (DPS) > Invader (Heal [currently DPS]). And the same should have occurred for the PvE sets. It didn’t though. Thank you, afterthought brilliance. So the time from RR35 to RR 68, if you refuse to do PvE, you will be seriously hurting your improvement as a HealDoK. You will basically remain mediocre, until you finally can squeeze into Warlord, months and months from now. Don’t be too sad, the Warrior Priest has the same gear issue; I was lucky on both of my Priest, I was full Dark Promise within 5 runs (2 to 3 weeks). The point being is, if you see spam in IC, looking for a healer for BB or LV, take it. A shot at even getting 4 pieces (Willpower and Crit bonus at 4) is one you want to take. Warlord is a very far distance away, take what you can get.

Every so often you will run into a DPSDoK. He/she kills things and fast. They are also wearing full Invader/Sovereign/Tyrant. And have lots of nice talismans and then lots of renown points too. Some are able to run solo on the lakes like a Witch Hunter/Elf, and then some are just supported well by their groups. However, unless in a strong team that knows them, the DPSDoK quickly turns into a FailDoK again if in PuGs against intelligent enemies. Healers just naturally don’t heal other healers for some reason. And then same will be applied to you if you run to far out, despite your gear.

There is also the LOLDoK. The LOLDoK, can take many forms, but mostly is an arrangement of both trying to be melee and cast heals at the same time. Maybe it was the bonuses on the Conqueror set, maybe it is that it succeeded once, or maybe it was the paint chips, but every so often you will inspect a DoK that has two blades, a mixture of gear with both Strength and Willpower slotted. You can watch them run up to the enemy casting HoTs, smack a tank a couple of times, and then spam two sets of group heals, then smack the tank again. Most might think this is the FailDoK, but it is actually the LOLDoK. They will live a little bit longer, and provide about 7 seconds of laughter to any other DoK that witnesses it. Hence the LOLDoK.

In my current struggle, I have full Invader and am currently trying to pound out the Darkpromise to tide me over to Warlord. Even having Superior Wards, I still take every opportunity to run Blood and Bile for Sentinel. Finishing either PvE set can be fast if extremely lucky, but I have heard of nightmares of players never seeing a single piece in over 2 dozen runs. By then, you will be in Warlord, you might as well take a chance at having half Sentinel/Darkpromise if anything. And that is my goal. Until that time, since Renown rank 43, I have developed a new DoK formula I like to call the MehDoK. It is basically a complete combination of a DPS, Heal, LoL and Fail DoK all in one.

The Meh Disciple

For those that have read the prior article, I’ve highlighted what I changed.

Basically, what I found is that you live 3 lives in your pre-RR80 T4 mold. You need renown, and lots of it. So you are mostly doing RvR. As frustrating as it can be, Open RvR still provides the most renown when you can zone lock and be there for all the objective takes. The second part to your life is Dungeons. You want and need that heal gear to better advance those sets. The third is SCs. It probably won’t rule your life, but SC weapons are still nice. The problem with the Masteries is, that you want Dark Rites for the SCs, Sacrifice for the Dungeons and then Torture for the ORvR. That’s a lot of respecing. I re-developed The Meh spec so that I can do all 3, respectively.

If you specialize, you can’t really find a life doing whatever you want. If you go full heals, you can’t go run out in the lakes alone and score giant Renown on solo kills. If you go full DPS up the Torture tree, you can go solo, but your life in finding dungeon runs or premades will be most difficult.

You can start your MehDoK by the time you are RR45 and able to now fit in your Conqueror set.  There are 4 things that you need to have to have a MehDoK:

Renown in Toughness and Heal Crit (Renown tactics for Skirmish and Scenarios)
Mastery in full 15 Points in Dark Rites (no abilities nor tactics purchased) with 7 to 9 Points in Torture (Buy the Bloodthirst Tactic) 
You need a healset gear (Sentinel/DarkPromise with some Annihilator/Warlord)
And a DPS set (Conqueror/Invader)

The Heal Setup (Dark Rites)

You can’t have 2 swords all the time. Eventually you going to be one of 2 or 3 healers in an SC, and your melee heals are going to get everyone killed. As well, in Keep and City Defenses, melee heals are just hard to keep up, you’ll do better just being a normal healer. And then again, not too many premades are looking for melee heals, a chalice will get you in to the good. Plus it’s where the big RPs are. This has become my main setup, as my life evolves around SCs. To do so I keep a full 15 points in the Dark Rites path. No abilities purchased; mainly because, the only ability you need is the Group Heal. The Morals are kind of okay, just not worth it in my opinion. A shield proc and a the moral bonus are nice, don’t get me wrong; I just have something else in mind.

Basically, you’ll also need an entire Heal set of equipment in your bag, for quick adjustments. This can be a combination of Annihilator, Sentinel, Dark Promise, or Warlord. But then you’ll aslo want the Heal Cloak and Jewelry from LOTD. And then of course atleast a Purple Chalice. The LOTD is the easiest one to find, plus it has 2 talisman slots, can use LOTD talis and has a great 30 Willpower already in it’s base stats. I personally also keep the Warlord Insignia Toughness Wound Sword and then the Invader Chalice for 2% heal crit. The equipment should be slotted with a heavy focus on toughness/armor/wounds. I preferably like toughness, but I also keep Wounds in 2 spots. As for my armor combination, I use 5 piece Warlord (helm, belt, jewelry, gloves, shoulders), 2 pc Dark Promise (boots and chest), then 2 pc Heal Glyphs, and then LOTD heal cloak with matching jewelry. The slots are combined with Armor/Toughness. Previously, I ran an 2pc Annihilator/ 3pc Conqueror /Sentinel Shoulder setup with Wounds/Armor.

I keep two tactic setups ready to go for this setup. For PvP, I use the following:

Discipline (Boost in your Willpower – No brainer)
Fueled Actions (Generates SE when you get hit 25%)
Potent Covenants (Makes your covenants proc 15% more often)
Bloodthirst (Increases damage from the Covenant of Celerity)

I primarily have this setup at all times. The reason being is my life is in the cities and scenarios. And even in the Open Skirmish basically involves my constant and immediate danger to the front lines. I can only really heal well with the group heal, and the 100 foot radius is not really 100 feet. You need to be close, and if you hang back, a WH is going to get you. You are safer near a guard.

The idea is you run about, group healing with spot heals outside the group, while taking a good bit a damage. This is the reason you focus you talismans and renown in toughness/armor/wounds, so that you can take a beating. Plus you want the beating, it gives you Soul Essence now that you have Fueled Actions slotted. As for the other 2 slots focused on procing Celerity, they are well worth it. You end up adding a ton of DPS to your group. You essentially are giving them an addition 350 Spirit Damage hit every 3 strikes. That’s pretty amazing. If you have some DoT based DPS, you just made their day, so long as they stay near you.

So now you are a tough beast, a moster group healer, and a DPS addition to your group. That’s an amazing win.

There are arguments that say the Potent Covenants does not work on the group. In an effort to either prove it wrong and right, I did some checks with another DoK on some Keep Doors and shared our combat logs after 5 minutes of autoattacking the door, with me having the tactic and being the owner of the covenant cast, and him not having either on. In spot checks f the results, I most certainly was striking for about 35%, and he was getting  near the same. Until proven wrong, I stand beside it working for the group. Not that I have gone digging for a full analysis lately though.

I have another setup, when either I won’t get the guard, or I don’t have a confident group. This is the play it safe setup.

Discipline (Boost in your Willpower – No brainer)
Fueled Actions (Generates SE when you get hit 25%)
Terrifying Aura (AoE spreads your detaunt)
Dark Blessings (Increases Incoming Heals by 10%)

Spam your Terrifying Detaunt every 15 seconds on possible attackers, and you’ll find that you can heal through just about anything. The key is to detaunt them, before they even hit you. I slot Dark Blessings, just because I like to play in close to the chest. I want Fueled Action procs on my SE pool. So basically run about just slightly behind Tanks, cycling HoTs, Group Heals, and Detaunts hoping to at least take on some fire.

The other heal setup I have is for Dungeons. And I use this the least, as melee is the way to go. There are just some bosses its worth having a chalice out for. Not often, but they exist. ToVL 1st boss and 3rd boss is a good example of needing to be able to switch back and forth. For this I have these Tactics:

Discipline (Boost in your Willpower – No brainer)
Subtlety (25% less Hate)
Transferred Focus (boost 20% better incoming heals to your defensive target every time you crit an enemy)
Khaine’s Imbuement (25% chance to DoT for Spirit Damage)

Sometimes you need to stand back, and then other times you just need more group heals, but still need to hit. Hitting NPCs still generates SE, so you might as well make those hits worth it in between spamming group heals. Some may ask, if you unslotted your Melee Crit Armor, why have Transferred Focus back in the slots? Because you still get crits even without a focus in it. That’s a great deal, you’ll still spark the 20% heal bonus on the tank, and that’s always a big plus.

The DPS Melee Setup (Torture)

The next setup you have for the MehDoK is the DPS Melee Setup, you’re best specialization for Dungeons or solo renown gain. This requires your full Conqueror or Invader setup, with 2 swords , and DPS cloak with DPS jewelry.

In my personal case, its full Invader, all in Weapon Skill/some Strength Talismans except for the boots that have Odjira (PvP, I have another set with STR for Dungeons) and the gloves that have Kamenra. I use the Purple Cloak you can get from Rank 5 keep purple bags, it has 3% crit. Then I also have 1 Onslaught Rings for an extra 2% crit, but then I have 3 glyphs that provide 4% parry and another 108 melee. And to top it, I’ve been fortunate with picking up 2 Warlord Purple Bag Sword, not only providing an extra 120 strength and 60 WS, but then another 4% crit. I’ll admit, this was a really fortunate setup I have. Warlord purple weapons, friends that run ToVL that they just give me talis, I’m a privileged dude. Though you may not be able to get all the same, you should at least get what you can. The middle wing in BS will give you an amazing sword, it has 4% crit. Go grind it with some friends. And LOTD WC grinding will provide you decent jewelry along with making decent Talismans to replace Odjira and Kamenra.

Basically, the places where you will enjoy this setup is mostly in Open RvR solo. But specifically now with the AAO, you can just stalk paths for zones the enemy zerg is trying to lock. 1 kill on a noob now equals like 5K renown. Keep takes, Objectives, and yes, Dungeons and even SCs (with good teams, rare though). I find the two biggest issues with any DPS DoK is: One, getting to your opponent on time since ranged are pounding you like a boxing bag with snares; or Two, the simple fact you just run out of AP if you are pounding on something receiving heals. The Invader set really helps with the AP issue, and the Kanemra is a great boost to just being able to keep fighting. If you can successfully reach your target (Odjira in your boots should fix that) and remembering that you can cleanse snares, you probably can heal through about what ever you want with Soul Rend and Consume Essense, not to mention any WE, Choppas or Tanks that led you in. Hopefully you didn’t run in first, and were at least smart enough to travel behind a more threatening foe.

There are two tactic setups I like to have ready in when in Melee. The first I use when I want to go make mad renown all by my lonesome:

Divine Fury (boost hits by 25%, but reduces direct heals by 20%)
Murderous Intent (boost all crits by 10% [melee, heal, ranged, magic] and parry by 10%, with a 20% penalty on direct heals)
Potent Covenants (Makes your covenants proc 15% more often)
Bloodthirst (Increases damage from the Covenant of Celerity)

Keep in mind, it’s direct heals, not melee heals, that are getting reduced. Yes, your spam group heal is failing by 40% less, but melee heals (Rend Soul) are valued on your hit and now are getting heavily bolstered. They just mirror the value of your strike (in Rend Souls case, 350% of your hit). By the way, melee heals can’t be Debuffed for Outgoing heals, they are still effected by Incoming though as an FYI.

For Dungeons, I like to have the tactics setup in which I just replace Murderous Intent with Subtlety. Unless of course the Main Tank is Guarding you like they should, to give them more agro due to the massive agro you will cause. If you are guarded, still take out Murderous Intent, but slot in Khaine’s Imbuement (Procs Spirit DoT 25% of hits for 9 seconds). You don’t need parry anymore, and you have more than enough crit to proc what you need. Keep in mind also that your direct heals are only reduced by 20% now, not by 40%. 20% allows you to easily throw group heals again. If you really want to be the pivotal force, get the DPS Chalice from the Insignias. That way you get you DPS still with the Melee Crit, but now you get 8+ SE feeding you too.

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This is my new Meh DoK in a nut shell. It has served me well so far. It’s versatile, it’s effective and most importantly it’s got the Meh seal of approval. Will this be my setup always? No, in fact, while writing this article (both the first and latest) over the past month or so, I have respec’d 18 more times, trying out full Dark Rites, full Sacrifice, Full Torture and another combination of Sacrifice and Torture. In the end, to be able to do any one the 3 (RvR, SCs, Dungeon) without respec’ing each time, I end up specing this way. Since Dungeons have been a little light, I have been currently full spec’d in the Dark Rights tree with all the feature, trying to figure out suggestions to balancing this class.

On that note. There are rumors about the group heal getting nerfed and the class being re-balanced, whether that’s a nerf or just to be a re-distribution of OP to another effect, we don’t know. Point is, if you are reading this article 6 months from now in 2011, none of the above maybe true anymore.

Warhammer Online: Suggestion: Custom Armor Sets

Warhammer Online is approaching a point that many MMOs hit and have a tough time figuring out how to keep subscriptions; not only with new players coming in, but with your current end game population. When an MMO matures you end up having very vast population type. One of which is the heavy end game players decked out with all the best gear. Trying to appease these players generally causes more imbalance as new and better things must be introduced. This can cause a great deal of heartache and frustration for newer players coming in late in the game. So as Mythic is introducing a second set of Sovereign gear to appease these end game players and keep them in the game that much longer for Patch 1.3.6, it’s only a small matter of time before they must give another new introduction of better stuff to keep those subscriptions. With the Renown cap being raised to 100 in December, you can bet more renown bonuses and gear are going to be introduced. As they do, more and more imbalance occurs. At first response, it seems Mythic answer is to give massive renown bonuses to Sub 80s, to catch them up. I no like.

I come from years in EVE. Which is by far the most successful unbalanced and unforgiving MMO to be shat out of a developer’s mindset. You have a game that only grants end game by time played. You learn skills (over time) and can fly and use nicer things along the way. Technically, you never even have to play, you can just manage training the whole time, grow a toon and play them about 3 years later. the game reward more to inaction, then it does constant stimulation. Along with a very in-depth economy and crafting system, coming in as a new player is the most uphill battle any gamer could take on. But even in that game, after 5 years, there is not a lot of end game combat content for players to get into. Once you max out your combat skills, you then take on life in a corporate mastermind, and when that’s all in place, you spend your time defending it.

The game is centered around spaceships, in which they range in sizes and capabilities. It’s not a matter of simply DPSing, Healing, or Tanking. Everything is about custom setups, and slightest incorrect item slotted on your ship can cause a fleet to be lost. Each ship has so many slots, and then special bonuses for which the ship is unique. Tech 1 are your basic cost-effective ship, and Tech 2 are your expensive but highly bonus set ship. These levels of infinite customization got CCP to introduce a Tech 3 custom-made ship about 2 years ago. A ship in which you could build different sections, put it together and end up making a ship with more of what you would specifically in Slottings, Stats and Bonuses. The key was, these Tech 3 ships were only available in the Cruiser size ships. Not your Battleship or bigger. This meant even a 1-year-old character had a shot in playing more evenly with the older gens.

We have a version T1 and T2 ships in WAR. T1 ships being your standard Green, Blue and Purple armor that each have talisman slots for some minor customization. And then Tech 2 ships being your Mythic level Armor that not only have Talisman slots but also set bonuses. However we have a major separation in the stats and bonuses these high level sets give. There is a grand difference between RR35 Annihilator sets to RR70 Warlord.

What was nice about the Tech 3 custom ships in EVE, was that they weren’t placed at an unreachable level to newer up and coming players. They were purposely set there in front of them. You might not have the years to fly a capital ship, but with some income and some advance skills you could fly on par with a 4 year old character. At the same time, these ships were also highly desirable from the old players because of the customization; it was an introduction that everyone would wanted.

I think the same idea is ripe for the taking in WAR. A custom set of armor needs to be introduced. Not so much as a RR80+ set, but as RR60 set. Right now, RR60 is quite attainable for any player. As many players in high RR70s still play in Invader for the stats. The point is, that Sovereign might get you more armor and other values, but it doesn’t necessarily fill all the gaps in stats based on how you like to play. I willing to bet many players would gladly take a hit slightly to their Armor Value and other misc values if it meant that they were able to pick more of the stats and bonuses, but still want their very unique other Armor depending on play type and situation.

Basically my idea is influenced around the introduction of slotting how you want your armor to look and the fact the drops are now based on armor type, not specific classes. Those two things help make this dream possible. Here are the details as I have dreamt them so far:

There are no RR requirements, once you are 40, you can wear them. Obtaining them is another story.

To acquire one requires a specific chance or task. Getting all of them would mean you have to do everything in-game. You can’t just be an ORvR zerger, or an SC whore, or a Dungeon fiend. You want the full set, you will be doing a great deal of everything. 

There are 11 pieces; Chest, Helm, Shoulders, Belt, Gloves, Boots, Cloak, and 4 Jewelry Pieces.

To encourage all aspects of the game there will be contribution PQs added to almost everything. Dungeons, SCs, ORvR and City. The PQs are additional to any other PQs that may already exist, for instance ToVL or City.

These PQs only give a small amount of bags, and gold bags are very rare to show. For the most part, these additional green bags really only offer the standard 200 containers and gold. So winning a green is not so bad, it’s free and not throwing an imbalance. This PQ ends at the end of an SC, at the lock of a zone, at the very end of the City, and at the very end of a Dungeon. Again gold bags are extremely rare. Simply doing an SC is not going to grant one lucky person out of 12 a bag for example. Conditions apply and they are difficult to obtain. PQs of course use the standard contribution base rate, and then the random screw you out of nice stuff random dice roll.

For Scenarios, the instance must be a win for the PQ to give rolls to players. A gold bag appears randomly on a rate of about 10 Scenarios. There will always be at least 2 green bag. This PQ gold bag will drop the Boots or the 1st Jewelry Piece. That would mean on average it would take 120 SC wins to obtain one gold bag, and almost another 180 to obtain the other piece (that number keeps in mind getting the same piece on your next bag). That’s a lot of runs, and a great boost to your ego if you so got that lucky.

For City, the instance must be a 3 stage win. One side has to win all three stages to proc the custom Armor PQ roll. A gold bag appears here randomly on a rate of about 5 City instances. There will always be atleast 4 green bags. This PQ gold bag grants the Chest only. This will probably be the hardest of all pieces to acquire. On average it may take 120 runs to obtain this piece.

For Zone Locks, the zone locking side has an entire PQ roll for all those involved. Contribution is taking into account, but you are rolling against many players. Upto 5 gold bags depending on time and difficulty of resistance for the zone lock. This gold bag can grant Gloves or the 2nd Jewelry Piece.

Dungeons are split in 3 parts to help encourage higher ranks to help those lower than them:

For Crypts/WarpTunnels (Order) or Blood and Bile (Destro) runs, a PQ roll is given at the very completion of a full clear. It doesn’t matter the order, just as soon as the leader completes all the bosses, the PQ roll will appear. A gold bag appears randomly on a rate of 20 instances. This gold bag can grant either the Belt or the 3rd Jewelry Piece.

For Lost Vale a PQ roll is given at the very completion of a full clear. It doesn’t matter the order, just as soon as the leader completes all the bosses, the PQ roll will appear. A gold bag appears randomly on a rate of 20 instances. This gold bag can grant either the Shoulders or the 4th Jewelry Piece.

For Tomb of the Vulture Lord a PQ roll is giving at the very completion of a full clear at the 9th Boss. It doesn’t matter the order, just as soon as the leader completes all the bosses, the PQ roll will appear. A gold bag appears randomly on a rate of 20 instances. This gold bag can grant either the Helm or the Cloak.

Basically with this setup and really hard to achieve items, getting 3 pieces is a decent goal upto RR60 and 5 by RR70. Getting all 11 is near impossible. As it should be for epic gear in my opinion. This will keep RR80 on their toons longer, as well as get everyone into everything in this game, and help encourage higher ranks to help lower ranks at a shot to get something they need. One of the problems with low-level PvE is, the experienced that can get you through, have no desire. This should help give them that nudge. PQs cannot be master looted, nor opted out of. No more rage at individual players for not opting. It is what it is, hard as hell, to get that gold bag. This set is not granted by simply just logging in.

So now that we understand how to get them, and the difficulty of doing so, what about these pieces make them a set that any player would drool over?

Each piece has talisman slots and no stats beside a basic Armor and Magic Resistance Values, depending on the type of Item (cloth, light, medium, or heavy), allowing the user to customize the individual piece. You can also stack upto three similar talismans on one piece. Since almost every type of talisman can be made, these pieces of equipment greatly rely on talisman making as a skill. Depending on the item determines the amount of slots.

For example a Medium Armor boots would be received with a basic stats of 500 Armor and then would have 5 Talisman slots. Where the belt would have 100 of each Magic Resist and 4 Talisman openings. The Chest would have 620 Armor and have 6 slots. A jewelry piece would have 80 for each Magic Resistance and 2 Talisman slots. And so on and so forth.

The next part to the custom set is the bonus. You can also slot the type of bonus you want. To do this there are merchants in Altdorf and IC that sell the bonuses for you to slot. That way you can choose your bonus. The basic bonuses are purchasable. The better bonuses are purchased with rare items, such as bestial tokens.

 The 2nd Piece Bonus are centered around boosting a main stat. Like +75 to Strength, WS, BS, Intel, or Willpower.
The 3rd Piece Bonus are centered about defense stats. Such as +550 to Armor, +75 to Wounds, Toughness, Initiative or +380 to a Magic Resistance.
The 4th Piece Bonus deal with crits. Such as 5% to Melee, Range, Heal or Magic Crit.
The 5th Piece Bonus deals with defensive boost, such as increasing 5% to Parry or lower chance to be crit.

These set bonuses require better currency to purchase:
The 6th Piece Bonus deals with Procs. Attacks or Taken attacks do something. Such as a 10% to auto Taunt (even if you arent a tank), Detaunt, or 10% to boost healing by 20% to Defensive target, or 10% change to cause more damage to a Target.
The 7th Piece Bonus deals with Pools. These bonuses can help boost AP, Moral or Mechanic Pools. Either by chance to gain AP (et cetera) or by actually making the pool itself larger.
The 8th Piece Bonus deals with gain a new passive ability. Stealing stats from enemies by attacking, boosting stats through heals, or boosting attacks or heals by 5%.
The 9th Piece Bonus allows you to boost 3 levels in a mastery tree.

These Bonuses require an even more unique currency to purchase;
The 10th Piece Bonus allows you to gain a new active ability. These abilities would be basic ones, like a charge or juggernaut. Maybe even a detaunt or challenge.
The 11th Bonus allows you to buy something so epic, I can’t even think of something epic enough to fill as an example. 

The bonus slot is on each piece. Granted if you slot a 3rd piece bonus, but are only wearing 2 pieces, you won’t receive the bonus for obvious reasons.

Potentially the Custom Set can and would be the most Overpowered set in the game. However, it should be. To even gain one piece is hard enough. It would take months to get 5 pieces to even get a set equal to the Warlord setup. Getting over 7 pieces would take nearly forever, and 11 pieces seems out of reach. But that’s kind of the point. This is the epic set, the end all, and the hard to achieve. It should feel like its not at all easy, but still somewhat possible.

Just another idea,

Warhammer Online: The Real New Player Guide

So … you are completely brand new to WAR. First day in and you feel like it’s just a little lack luster. You aren’t finding the PvP you heard everyone so raving about. The PvE seems random at best. And nothing really seems to make sense. How have your friends been playing this that long, and you can’t understand why anyone would put up with this for more than 10 minutes. The simple answer is, we all know the little things. When we start a new toon, we take 5 minutes, organizing our mods, UI, chats, and hotbars. 5 minutes takes us from frustrating gold spam and clustered UI, to feeling right at home.   

Unfortunately, when we finally encourage you to download the trial and play around, we forget to tell you all these things. There is a lot of “Oh yeah, do this …” and “Oh fuck, you need to turn this off …”

I recommend going in, running about, taking small steps before and going out grabbing everything you need. Just play and learn one piece after another. Here’s what you need to do with WAR when you get in:

Chat Window – Basically, this is the number one thing you want to learn and fix right away.

Firstly, right-click the Chat Tab, on the drop-down menu, choose Filter.  Here are 3 things you should turn off, Advise, Loot Roll, Coin.

Advise channel was supposed to be a nice idea. The idea was for upper levels to communicate and assist new players that had basic questions that needed answering. Unfortunately, it actually just is a gold spam haven. If you don’t turn it off, you’ll watching Gold Spam all day.

Why Loot Roll and Coin? There is really no point. I like chat to be just that, chat. I don’t want to be in a convo or looking through WB orders, to have a giant list of grey jump out of no where, because a green piece of crap dropped that everyone is rolling on. Same goes with coin. These are things that just happen, whether or not you can see them, there is no change or adjustment you can make, they don’t matter. Better to see an order than to know you gained 37 more bronze.

Same goes for /ignoring vs. just filtering the advise channel. You could keep it up and spend the time /ignore on each gold spammer that comes up. However, it’s going to be at critical moment when the WB leaders says “Go around to Docks,” instead at that very moment Captaingoldshiter will macro spam 15 times “Hey, I shit gold all day. Come buy some at http://www.ishitgold.com.”

You most likely will have to learn to /ignore people, as some daring gold spammers and ass-hats alike are just easier to /ignore or you can right-click their name in chat and choose to ignore from there. If you keep ignoring enough people, you will earn unlocks.

Graphics – My setup might not equal your setup.

Despite WAR being a 2008 game developed in 2006, its graphics and effects along with a shitload of people in the same place at one time is probably going to make you lag. If you feel you are experiencing lag, I can tell you from experience, it’s not the game, it’s you. Either it’s your computer or your connection. It takes a lot for me to lag out. Sure, I’ll get a spike, but nothing that makes me rage.

If you are getting lag, go to the video settings, and pull it down to Fastest Fragmentation. After that, if you are still getting lag, your internet connection is your next concern. But most likely, you just need to turn down your effects, and amazingly, no more lag.

If you didn’t already, stop by your Music tab and turn off the music. Since you are there already.

Instant PvP – For some reason none of the new player guides actually make this apparent.

There is 3 types of PvP in WAR. Open RvR (which you have to run to in the North of Nordland, the South of Norsca), City Sieges (which can’t experience yet), and Scenarios (Which no new players seem to know about).

In the upper right corner of your screen is a map. To the top left of that Map is a Blue button with the WAR symbol in Orange inside of it. This is your Scenario Queuer. You can queue when ever you like and play in instant PvP fun anywhere.

That way you can have your PvE grinding and your PvP cake too. When you come out of the SC you will spawn where ever you left in. So make sure you don’t go in right inside a massive amount of NPCs. Also, you will spawn in the Warcamp, if you took the SC on a RvR objective. That is the only exception.

Massive PvP – Sure you could play in chapter 2 and 3 all day long, or you could run a bit and go own some newbs.

If you are Order, run north, if you are Destruction, run south. In the center of the 2 zone is the RvR open warfare. At times it’s just mass balls of morons duking it out. Enjoy.

Basically, if you keep running by yourself into a wall of enemies, over and over, stop doing that. Go around. Or better yet, open the Open Warband Window and find a group to assist you in dyeing a little less.

PvE the Right Way – The PvE is a bit different in this game. The aspect of grind is the same, but the best way may not be the one you would think of.

Essentially WAR’s PvE is broken into 4 Chapters per Tier/Zone which have Quests from NPCs, Public Quest Areas,  random spots of junk mobs for your grinding pleasure, and Dungeons. What you are used to is the Questing and Mobs; every MMO has them. What you aren’t used to is Public Quest and Influence.

Questing will give you the XP you want, while rewarded adequate cash levels. The items rewarded from some of these quests are … mediocre at best.  

PQ (Public Quest) will give you decent XP but grant better access to Gear. Each Chapter has 3 reward levels in Influence that you can claim from the local Rally Master. Just assisting, not competing (though it helps) in a PQ gives you influence. Saying you complete it and decent bag drop in the chest, you can get even nicer gear from the PQs.

Mob Grinding is probably the slowest way to XP unless you have the rested bonus. Gear drops are rare and not usually decent. NPC soldiers drop some coin, but beast don’t. The best way to make your mob grinding worth it, is for crafting. If you are just sitting beside a Wolf Mob just grinding the kills for XP, but you aren’t Butchering, you are doing it wrong. Even if you don’t want to learn crafting yet, you can sell the Mats. Make your time worth wild, make XP and Gold, by getting yourself a craft.

Dungeons are more end game. There is early game dungeons, but they can be frustrating just joining up to do it. I recommend you stay away from Hunter’s Vale unless you have steel patience. Players just leave at wimbs and getting through the whole thing is difficult short of you rolling a new toon with your guildmates, and you 6 are just decent dungeon runners. Saying you can be the sixth man in a 5 man guild run, that’s about the only time I would recommend it. The run is just too complicated for 6 new players to dedicate time to do. I don’t want to discourage HV, but you should not hold it against the game when after 4 hours of failure sends you into nerd rage as you accomplish nothing. That’s your warning if you are impatient.

The best and fastest way to make your way to level 10 with renown, is to run Quest that take you to PQ areas while queueing for Scenarios. Basically, go to the Chapter start, pick up your quest. Do a quick (M) Map veiw and just take a moment to map out that your quest are going over PQs. If you have ones taking you way out of your way, they might just be worth dropping. Run to each quest, if they so happen to be on a PQ (so many are), doing at least the 1st stage is worth decent XP and Influence. Whenever you aren’t just about to complete a PQ stage, you should be Queue’d for Scenarios. Do some quests, complete some PQ stages, take some Scenario Pops, turn in your quests’ rewards, move on to the next PQ area with quests, rinse repeat.

They key to chapter grinding is knowing when to move on. Taking on mobs 2 levels above you, may take too much time to recover from each fight, but will grant your best XP. 1 level above you to equal level mobs is a good way to stabilize your XP gain while maintaining your health to keep going in a steady pace. The level 8 might be worth more, but if it takes you to half health that means that you have to pause for too long to take on more. You kill to time ratio is too slow, go back down to level 7 or 6 mobs.

The Big key to making the most XP is to move on, once you out leveled your chapter. There is no reward big enough to complete a chapter to grind out PQ while killing mobs 3 level below you. Move on, make more XP, more money and see more, do more.

Or … you could just take the time to enjoy the game. One of the biggest problems is some people won’t move forward. They’ll spend hours trying to earn the one blue piece at level 8. The sad truth is blue at level 8 is relatively worth the equivalent of the white rank 11 piece. In the amount of time it took to get that one peice, you could have leveled 2 or 3 ranks and be wearing a green piece that is way better. XP/Level is Always greater than Gear … until T4. A Knight in full green gear at Rank 30 will tear to pieces a Maurader wearing full purple at Rank 22. Gear is cool, but don’t get too attached. Move on, enjoy the finer things in the game.

Crafting – It’s fricken easy as Hell. You should have no excuse.

Take the time in Chapter 2 to learn you some crafting. Best pay off early in the game is Scavenger/Talisman Maker. You can make talismans (decent too) relatively early. And most PQs and Quest are involved around things you can Scavenge. Magic Salvaging is a bit harder. In the long run, it’s definitely needed, but more difficult to get decent results.

Butchering is the same as Scavenging as it will provided quicker early results. Along with apothecary, this combination is a great money-maker. Though potions are not the best need in T1, Liniments are a costly must in T4. It’s good to have for the long run. Cultivating is the easiest of them all, yet the most difficult. Easy to do, yet hard to find nicer mats.

Talisman Makers needs a secondary skill for materials, either Scavenger or Magic Salvager. Weird tidbit to know. A Hedge Wizard is actually the Talisman Maker Career trainer.

Apothecary needs a secondary skill for materials as well, either Butchering or Cultivator.

External Resources – Once you have, you will always want them and nerd rage when they need an update.

Want to know more about your class before you spend time into it? Want to know more about certain gear before grinding for it? Want something just to better help you?

There are many aspects to improving game play. Essentially, Mythic designed the UI open for 3rd party mods. We end up all using these mods, so commonly, they should just be added to the game itself. But they haven’t. For this reason, you should go get some. Warning: Don’t pick up a ton right away, get some basics, then look for some more later, add then add some more, then delete some that you don’t really need. Where do we get our mods?

www.curse.com

Download the client, it will allow you pick up mods and put them right in your game. Here are some basic mods we all like:

SOR (State of the Realm) – Not all that helpful for T1 trial accounts. But once you hit T2, it shows where you can find ORVR action, and whats about to lock. Once you have it in game, you need to change the settings and probably move it out of the center of your screen.

Queue Queuer – Mod to help you queue for scenarios. Not that it’s that hard, but it has nice features, like being able to blacklist certain SCs you might not like. If you like Reikland Factory, you need to stop playing this game right now and go back to WoW! Also, it has a nice feature to gives you an extra minute to join an SC. Let’s face it, some of us take bit longer to shake. You’ll miss a lot less pops this way.

Moth – A great mod that opens a tooltip as your mouse rolls over something. You can examine the features of Enemies and Friends without targeting them. Think of it as HUD in a Flight Fighter game.

Show Health Percentage – All health bar, except your own, are focused around just visual bars. Boss fights, and keep doors are better represented with this mod. It just puts the percentage in the bar.

nRarity – This will highlight the item on you and in your bag with their color of rarity. This way you don’t have to roll over the item to see what it is.

If you play a Chosen or a Knight: Twister – The whole point of your class is the fact that you can twist. This mod will help you bind your favorite three into one button for mashing favor.

If you play a range class: Range Checker – This mod will just give you the basic range of your target. Not so much a big deal if your traget is out of range, its more about knowing when your target is within 45 Feet for those special tactics that give you boost in close range.

If you play a healer, you will need some sort of Unit Frame: Squared – is the most known. I recommend HealGrid – This setups squares of your group and warband so that you can easily target them to heal. You can also find additional addons with these that will allow you bind certain key option to cast specific heals for faster healing results. Very helpful for Scenarios if nothing else.

I hear some people really like Enemy – Worth looking into to find which one you like better. But a Unit Frame of some sort is going to be helpful.

For tank over 10. Using a Unit Frame like above is a great way to shift around your Guard, for Black Guards and Iron Breakers, it also allows you to move around your protector ability, so that you can get a bank of 100 Hate/Grudges at all times.

Scrolling Combat Text – A mod that changes the way the damage you take and deal is displayed. I find it gives you a better glimps of whats going on.

Tome Titan – If you like the idea of Unlocks, this is the first a major in-game collection of explanations on how to find the basics and some of the harder ones.

AutoDismount – A must have once you have a mount. This allows you to dismount just as soon as you activate any ability. It’s Just as EA says, it’s in the game.

If you take up Magic Salvaging as a craft: Hammertime – This will keep your hammer open to keep breaking down multiple items without having to keep activating the ability.

If you take up Cultivating: Miracle Grow Remix – Will keep the craft window open in a smaller version at all times. That way you can craft anytime, without opening a whole new window that will block your view.

VP Breakdown – Do one seems to understand VPs. It’s not hard. But if it is for you, this mod will help.

If you aren’t a tank or melee DPS: Detaunt Helper – Detaunt is the most important ability of any squishy. This will allow you to see who is hitting you the hardest, and even will target them so that you can detaunt sooner.

There are so many others. While viewing the mods, check 2 things; the description/comments and the date of the last update. Sometimes something was awesome, but the code fell out of play after a patch. Just because something has a great rating doesn’t mean it still works.

Understanding Classes – This MMO is a bit different. Tanks can hit as hard as a Melee DPS. Healers can DPS just as well. And Crowd Control is the real killer of them all.

Playing one way because you think it appeases the mass of morons is not the way to have fun. A sword and board tank in sub-T4 is not as effective as just neccessarily going all out DPS with a great weapon. Unless of course you are fully relying on the knockdown from the shield to kill something (IB/BG early ability).

Healers also don’t get a group heal to Rank 20. Focusing just on heals is actually pretty difficult. Not telling you not to. But in T1 and T2, before you get the Divine Fury tactic, do both dps and heals. It’s fun. Some of the best times I have had, was with a DPS Arch Mage (healer for High Elves).Disciples and Warrior Priest have a hard time healing without a charm. And a blue or purple charm at that.

The point is, T1 through T3 is the time to experiment. Don’t assume that you have to be a certain way.

Don’t Spend Excessively – Don’t spend money on changing your armor color. By T2 you will get a bolster in the RvR lakes making your rank 21 while you are there. That means you can summon a mount in the RvR lakes in that teir. However a mount cost 15 gold. That’s a lot of gold to have by rank 12. Not impossible, but certainly not going to happen if you are buying gear or changing colors all the time.

It’s quite depressing being the only one in T2 without a mount. Save up.

Learn – Each teir is going to introduce you to something new. Learn from it. More and more, you will need to be tactical and be able to work with groups. Staying solo your whole career won’t get you the nice gear or the best results. Always be on the lookout for a good community to join.

XP – lets you get more abilities. As well, over rank 11 you start to be able to specialize in a specific path. That’s something you don’t get to view until you are that age. (for some reason)

Renown – Allows you to add better stats in what you want to do. The first thing you should buy at Renown Rank 2 is the Red Tactic called Combat Awareness. This should help balance your renown and XP levels if you do too much PvP.

That’s all I have for now, enjoy,

Imma Eat My Hat

Meh. My predictions aren’t always perfectly right.

The announcement sounds off that it is not going to be an Expansion, unfortunately to my point, but after reading the items coming this December I think we are close enough. So Imma Eat My Hat, possibly, eventually, we’ll see. Avoiding the words expansion, and replacing them with buyable RvR packs is frightening, vague, … (insert any adjective around the basis of disconcerning).

 Being able to wear a Skaven Skin is about as appealing as paper cuts. 20 more renown ranks and gear sounds exciting though.

I still think the route of ninja secrets was dumb. Normally the smallest news makes headlines on the MMO fansites. This announcement … ehhhh … kind of proves my point of it being stupid to ninja announce things. I went to MMORPG.com and expected to see something on WAR, instead I see that NCSoft is running a Loading Screen Message Contest for City of Heroes. City of Heroes… repeat that to yourself … Shity of Reroes. I think that is the biggest ‘Fuck You’ I have ever seen to WAR. Not only, no article, but top news includes a copy of your game’s contest with a 7 year old game that is basically a screenshot submission.

If you do actually dig into the article on WAR40K: DM, you’ll find some words on WAR’s presence in GamesDay. It was declared as lack luster and mainly a live Q&A, but actually gave a snippet of the event inside an article tailered for DM. To them it meant that Mythic listened to their community. To the GW community, it did little to draw new players in. That one is always a concern to me.

Not that MMORPG.com is the greatest of all fansites for MMOs, but seriously … I think Mythic owes MMORPG.com an email with in Comic Sans font 42 Bold: “Fuck You”.

In the Pipe Line

I have had a great deal of ideas pop into my head. Not one I have finalized. Here is a glimpse of my draft folder:

Warhammer Online: Suggestion: More AI in Empty RvR

How to turn the empty city instance into atleast a minor challenge.

Warhammer Online: Pre-Nerf Suggestion: WP and DoKs

An examination of how to properly redistrbute the healing power to put the DoK more to the front and how to buff the melee heals.

Warhammer Online: The New and Improved Meh DoK

I’ve taken a second look at my Hybrid setup with some insight from the top two DoKs on Gorfang, and think I have found an awesome formula to use. More survivability, even more DPS, and still the same amount of heals. Oh yeah, it’s sweet.

Warhammer Online: Suggestion: Custom Armor Sets

What what? Yeah, it’s time. Giant article so far. Might not be even worth reading.

Warhammer Online: The Real New Player Guide

You know all those small things we forget to tell friends when they first start playing?

I’m hoping to have atleast 3 of these out next week. Mostly the DoK related ones. Before those talks get really ahead of my ideas.

I have a real life buddy experimenting with the game as well on the trial. I forget sometimes how much there is to teach that most of us have just figured out over the past 2 years.

I know I have been slow on the articles this month. I’m hoping to have a stronger finish with some useful ideas.

Warhammer Online: Post 1.3.6: MY MODS!!!

Yeah, I should probably write and article about Gamescon and stuff said, but that’s what my better at blogging friends are for. Go read theirs as I have. FYI, woot RR100. Surprisingly, I am not unhappy at all. Good move.

What’s my boat on?  … mods.

I didn’t play patch night and I only finally got on last night.

So I logged on, joined a premade, and got real f’ing pissed, real f’ing quick. My Squared wasn’t working at all. RAGE!!! Bottom line: Squared is not broken. Squared Click is apparently an issue to Mythic. Disable that, your Squared will work fine. I know Mythic went after /assist in the last patch. I did not realize they went after binded ability cast. I went back through the notes just to look for it. Maybe that is what /assist meant. So Squared Click isn’t working, neither is Autodetaunt, since it’s the same idea.

I’m not going to say I am a bad healer, but I am. I really really relied on those two mods to survive and actually heal in time. I’m not sure if I can actually keep up as a quality healer in a DoK shell. I wish I could trade him in for a Zealot right now. So, Mythic if you plan to nerf the group heal and buff the melee heal, I’m all ears on the proposal for it. As a mid line healer, having targets to heal in front of me and behind me, as well as always being the center focus of attacks, I’m not sure I can have fun, playing DoK, trying to cycle my detaunts properly and on time now, while constantly circling about trying to look for my targets to heal.

I completely understand that these mods might have been OP and allow for some ninja style rezzings and heals, but, being a front line healer is hard.  I much rather have a ‘real’ healer now. So, I like to hear some more about that buff to melee heals.

Good news: Though I probably shouldn’t announce it here, because Mythic will then counter it, but fuck ’em, they don’t read this blog anyway.

Who here was worried about the quitter debuff from crashing not allowing you to Queue for SCs?

I’ll give you 1 hint: Queue for SCs through Queue Queuer. It will bypass the quiter debuff.  Horay renown and insignias again. And you don’t have to rage at the crash no more. Or rather, rage that much harder.

Win!!!

But I don’t leave SC anyways. Even in the rapings. I might be slow to release, but I don’t quit. So I might be giving ammo to the ass-hats. I apologize if ass-hats are reading my blog and this encourages their ass-hattery. 

What the Hell Happened?!?

What happened to this server (Gorfang)?

It’s only been 3 and half months since I re-rolled. I was frustrated with Badlands. It had the best populations, but the worst communities. No unity, just mass zerg running about with a couple of people who knew what they were doing. In frustration of not being able to do the updated cities the way I wanted, I flipped to destro on Gorfang. There I found friends, I found a reasonable population of players and just perfectly steady amounts of action. Levelling through the teirs were enjoyable and pronounced the perfect new player experience. Once in T4, I was amazed to see so many still playing their 80s. And though the RvR was a little zergish, I was looking for city and SCs and found exactly what I wanted.

I don’t know what, I don’t know the exact point, but things have changed drastically. The populations seem low. Scenario pops seems inconstant and low as well. And what’s worse, is it seems that the ass-hattery that I left Badlands for, has followed me here. For the past week I have been experiencing just genuine morons in almost everything I do. SCs, City, RvR, you name it, there is a population concentration of at least 30% idiotic. I’m happy with my guild’s premades, but when it’s time for city, we can take in 2 groups and still get the biggest set of idiots out there. Apparently Idiot > Awesome.

Last night, I ended up logging off in frustration after a grueling set of moronic SCs. Just time after time, we faced double premades, which is not actually uncommon on Gorfang. You are bound to hit one premade if not 2. Finding a fully PUG SC is near impossible.

I’m not quite sure what’s up with the server. These toons had recognizable names. I mean, we are a small pop server, I think we all have seen each other at some point. Every instance I run, 2 if not 3 people are solo running. Not just healers, not just Witch Elves, I mean Chosen, I mean DoKs. Classes that if nothing else, have group abilities. I’m in my 7th straight SC of just getting our asses handed to us. Not, a loss, not even just minor kills. I mean no kills, no points, no anything. But a 15 minutes spawn camp of stupidity. I went into to nerd rage:

“Tell how many more fucking renown points you get from a complete fucking loss being all by yourself like that.”

I received a great deal of wonderful suggestions:

“STFU”
“Then stop Queueing”

I gave one more try. The 8th SC was actually worse than ever before. I thought the instance was just boned with 4 Destro versus 12. “Well, at least this will be over shortly.” So, we pass the 13 minute mark, and we didn’t get booted. “WTF.” I go and check the grouping screen and check the solo list, no joke, 8 people were soloing. Couldn’t find them, as the majority went onto the little island in Serpent’s Passage and were just running against a cliff.

I played on my BG for bit after. Till, I got frustrated with no T3 action, nor T4 RvR action. I pondered if was possible for Gorfang to turn around. I love my new guild, but … these are the exact reasons I left and came to this server.

Not they are on a different page. It’s gotten to the point, that most of my guild is ‘experimenting’ on Order Badlands. Which I am not opposed to. I mean, I have the upper edge with having (5) 40s there (3 over RR60 and 1 over RR70). I would like to be the big dog for once.

I might start doing some character organization on Badlands tonight. I’m truly at a Meh moment again.

Warhammer Online: WP and DoK Possible Changes

I didn’ t like the last Q&A sessions. Not at all. It’s one thing to give your standard answers;

‘Maybe’
‘We are not looking into that’
‘We talked about that once, but then a bird flew by and we forgot what we talking about’

I never been a fan of the Q&A. I feel questions on the forums get better answers, due to the fact they have more time for better formulation in the response. Generally, nothing new pops out of these Q&As, and for the most part I just catch the cliff notes to read over. Sometimes I jump in vent ahead of time and listen in, while still doing my normal thing, but that’s not common.

This time though, discussion were brought up about WP and DoK groups heals. I guess the idea is getting passed around that in trying to give better healing options for these classes, they accidentally made a healing beast for group heals. They want these classes to be even more up close and personal, as they are supposed to be front line heals.

All week I have been whining. Trying to figure out what I should I do. Why keep investing in a class that’s about to get nerfed? I mean let’s face it, there is only one thing the WP and DoK can do, and that’s uber spam the group heal. Take it away, and the class is pretty useless in terms of heals or assistance in PvP. One of the biggest killers to my team, isn’t the disable or silence (I still hate the 9 second Stagger and still think that Mythic Employee should be shot in the face) but it’s actually Shattered Limbs. It puts my last used ability into a 5 second cooldown. And since I only have 1 heal ability, that pretty much the worse thing in the world right there.

So though I don’t know any details yet on Mythic’s plans, I can still sit here and freak out. I feel as though their eyes are focused on that one ability, and nerfdom is coming. This isn’t a class with a lot of variety in heals. You have a decent HoT, like all other heal classes. A Group heal, that’s everything. And a piece of shit super expensive moron use ability, that heals for a small tad of crap and HoTs for 4 seconds with more useless HPS, but don’t forget it cost 55 SE/RF though. You could cast a 1 second group heal for 1500+ on everybody instantly for 55 SE/RF, or you could singe target heal for 600+ 300 over 4 seconds. If you are casting the second one at all on your groupmates, I’m betting you wear a bib for the drool coming out the side of your face.

Now is a 1500+ 1 second group heal OP? Kind of. I do agree there. It can be spammed and no other group heal is even close to its proportion … now. It didn’t used to be that way. See, WP and DoKs used to have the only 100 foot range group heal. Hence 1 second cast, because they are upclose. Not to mention, don’t have any other heals worth using. AM/Shammies and RP/Zeals used to have 150 feet. But that was reduced oh so long ago. When they reduced it and made all equal, there became a gap in the usefulness of group heals.

So when Mythic states they want to take away from this and give more to the melee heal, I worry. That’s the best thing for dungeons, so you will really only make a PvE king, but you will eliminate us from PvP. The problem with Melee Healing in PvP, everything has a damn absorption shield. Between tanks block, pocket items, healers shield procs (moral 3s and other abilities), you just aren’t viable heals in the field. Short of finding a moron Shadow Warrior willing to let you hit him/her without using a proc shield, and then you being a wiz kid with finding the defensive target for heals, you ain’t going to heal shit. If you did have decent heals while melee healing in an SC, every one of your opposers had drool on their chin. Congratulations, you found the perfect setup against tools, keep rolling that setup and see how that works against a double premade. And it’s not like you can switch targets half way into a Rend Soul. The only way I have used melee heals in the field of PvP successfully in premade fashion, is with a guard and 2 healers behind me. Holding a guard and being the 3rd healer is exactly what everyone wants in their premade. Everyone. OMG people will be offering you blow jobs to join their group with that kind of resume.

I’m very interested in hearing proposals for this changes. You can boost the healing all you want on the melee heals, but that doesn’t mean we can use it. If the proposal is to lower group heal and boost heals on Consume Essense, then I have an awesome toon to help roll people through VL on. And that’s all he’ll be able to do.

Basically, premades and pvp groups want heals that they don’t have to take care of and that can heal now. They want their guards on bombing BW/Sorcs, Rifting Magus/Engi, Slayers/Choppas. Basically classes that can kill, but need to be in harm’s way to do so. Why would a group want a healer that has to be up there with them, if they could just get better healing from something that doesn’t need a guard and then can heal when ever they want?

Formulate all you like Mythic. In the mean time, I’m going to get ready to convert to full-out DPS and probably spend more time on my tank. Or maybe just stop playing, which in the general direction of players after a nerf.

Maybe after the changes you can offer the ability to convert your DoK/WP into another class. Like just full-out give us the same RR and switch the character to that. That might keep us playing.

That’s right, I am in full QQ mode right here. Nothing even announced yet, just comments made in a Q&A session brought this on. QQ, mudder funkers.