Smile, Though Your Heart Is Aching

I might have left things in a bit of a dreary note. Let's change that.

Shortly after the patch first kicked in I got my faith in the game restored. And it only took one man.

We went in a city siege, even though I'm always reluctant. I dunno, it seems they either leave or we do. And if we don't we're all about the fail. But I had nothing better to do so in I went, guns blazing and heals aplenty.

As luck would have it, we were being led by one who has been aptly referred to as Caligula. General but-kissing aside, I always liked Caligula's leadership style. There's no second-guessing, there's no questions asked, there's no sentences that sound like questions but really aren't. There's no pussy-footing or beaver-tickling or things of that nature generally. There's just stfu and do as you're told. You know, like war should be.

We arrived a bit late, first stage was already well under way. We were up against God knows who (well, maybe someone remembers but I sure as hell don't) and, I must say, I was impressed. With our flanking tactics we absolutely murdered them time and time again but they knew what they were doing. In the middle flag, they took out the cannons, wipe after wipe. Then they fought over the bomb, stopping us from defusing it. Then they split us up to take Lyceum and the Outcrop. And we murdered them again and again and again but never did they faulter.

If I remember correctly we eventually won on the second stage, us being able to save Engra when he was down to 10%ish and the third stage, simply because there is no great mechanic there. You just kill.

This turned out to be not just one of the best city sieges I've ever been in (just because it was challenging for both parts) but an opportunity for me to rediscover why I like the game at all. It's not something that can be put into words, or at least not any words I know of. It just felt right. We all came out of that instance completely fulfilled. We couldn't have asked for anything much better than that.

Also, one good thing about the patch was that I got to leech almost an entire renown rank during the weekend (in a VERY casual gaming schedule) simply just by idling in The Maw while waiting for Eternal Citadel pops. Yes, you know what I'm talking about.

Patches, Laundry and Other, Less Exciting, Endeavours

I've been quiet about this patch. I've always said that I'd rather wait and see before I comment.

I've waited. I saw. I am not terribly impressed. Let me split this up in Pros and Cons (Pros as in "damn! he such a 1337 playa"; Con as in "convicted for the crime of sucking").

Pros

- I have a better mount now. No longer have I to consider making a few bogus accounts only to not be left behind during ORvR nights. Well, at least on my main, but I'll leave that part for the cons.

- My renown is boosted! Only, I haven't had many chances to up it...

- I got to change my hair! No longer will I be punishedwith clipping errors for a foolish choice made years ago when I didn't even know what helmets I would come across!

And...

I can't think of anything else...

Cons

- I got a new mount on my alts! Only, none of them is rr65. Good thing I didn't sell my old mounts before I noticed that little catch.

- I haven't really tried ORvR yet because, according to reports, it's terribad. Seems there's no time to do anything because Zerging still works. Maybe it even works better than before.

- Scenarios are... meh. I can't judge them because, in order for me to be able to participate, several conditions have to be met. If we're not in a city siege... and we needn't go any further because we're always in a city siege. Everytime. Even when no one's playing, there's a city siege going on because locking zones is ridiculously easy when there's no one in them. And they'll often be empty because zerging still works.

Or so I heard.

- I've also heard reports that, on certain players, critical hits will hit less than a regular hits or, at least, with a marginal dmg difference from a regular hit. Seems certain renown abilities could use a little revising.

- Speaking of renown training... I like it, for the most part. Some new skills are terribly interesting although most of them seemed (to me) to be tank or survivability related. One thing though: what in God's green Earth have they done to the interface? Why on Earth do you have to buy just one of them at a time from the longest list ever? This is particularly frustrating when you have over 70 points to spend. Looks like they did to that interface what they did to the AH.

- And what of the AH? No changes, I think. Don't think I actually checked but I at least read nothing about any changes. Which is a shame, really. Seems you can search for less things than before, most searched stats aren't searchable, (powers and crits) and you still can't searh for repairables. Plus, I have the distinct feeling I've been purchasing stuff from people I don't much care about.

I have to say, all of this reminds me of Ragnarok.
Not the end of the world or the spaceship. The korean MMO.

Let me explain:

It was my first ever MMO, possibly to your dismay and disbelief. I never played in the official servers, though, we played on a private free server. Drop rates and XP gain were faster there and, for a while, we were happy. But soon the "doner" factor started taking it's toll. You see, like any F2P game, people who chose to donate were quite OP and strut about like they were all that, discarding the best gear on the floor around us, like the french kings of old. We felt left out of the rain and, eventually, we became doners ourselves.

To a lesser extent, I wonder if this is what is to become of those that, unlike the most of us, won't buy the packs. I hope not. But people running around IC with useless two-headed gos between their legs reminds me of those colourful wings RO players could buy to look purty and be imba.

Fret not. I don't see myself dropping the game anytime soon.
No sir.
But I'd love to see some changes, for the feeling of disappointment to go away.
African-descendant person born equal under God and/or possibly other deities of the same religious nature now and for all time, PLEASE!

i'll take some RvR to go, please

As you all know there's been some info roaming around about the soon(?) to come RvR packs.

There's bits and pieces about this scattered all over the place. Enough to get my mind crunching some ideas, but not nearly enough to give us definitive knowledge about the stuff.

It's obviously Skaven themed. That much Andy and Carrie have disclosed and it's one of the few questions that they have openly answered.

Andy put up a thread on the official forums for people to ask questions and he's been answering them (you can read it here) and I find it funny that he openly says "no" to subjects like the racial capitals, but he says "we are not ready to discuss that" to things like fortresses.

One thing is for sure, I was thinking of how cool it would be to bring the Fortresses back but in another area, and have them host relics like the DAOC ones, but he already said that there are not going to be Relics as they don't want to give the strongest side even more power =(

What follows is a rant about what I'd

love to see as the result of 1.4 and the RvR packs. It's based on the information that I've read online, but it's more of a wishful thinking rant than a factual future.

According to the concept artwork (that you can see above) the new skaven area looks like it could be a network of underground tunnels.

Add to that the fact that they say the new area is going to be part of the campaign.

Also, on the forum thread i linked to before, one person asked "where is the new area gonna be situated on the world map?" to which Andy answered "it's going to be on the world map" (or something in those lines)

At first i thought he was making a smart remark, cuz obviously everything on the world is on the world map... but then it got me thinking...

what if the new skaven area is BELLOW everything we already know in T4??

think of this... there are 3 pairings. each with 3 zones. making a total of 9 T4 maps that are RvR enabled.

The new area could simply be a chain of tunnels that go underground, bellow the T4 as we know it today, linking all tiers and all zones together. A mesh of pathways that have diferent exits for each one of the 9 maps we have today.

They also told us that they are keeping the keeps and the BOs but they're gonna change the way the campaign advances, and that they're removing some of the locking mechanisms for the zones.

AND they wanna break off the zerg.

So. with all this in mind, my idea is as follows.

Imagine there are no zone locks. Only Pairing locks.

to lock a Pairing, you have to controll all BOs and Keeps on that pairing.

but the zones themselves do not lock. and you don't need to advance from Chaos Wastes to Reikland to lock the pairing.. you just have to controll it all, but in no particular order.

Let's consider that destro starts taking keeps and BOs in Chaos Wastes.

We take both keeps and all BOs.

We don't lock the zone cuz they don't lock anymore

We decide to move on to Praag, so we send some Warbands there to take the keeps and battle objectives BUT!!! we must leave some warbands behind in chaos wastes to defend the already controlled keeps and BOs because Order could just run back and take them away from us.

BAZINGA!!!! the zerg is broken. we need to split our forces to be able to defend shit :P

Now.. we manage to take control of Praag as well, and we try to advance into Reikland, but there's order there.. so we end up having a big fight... and obviously, as order is there, people in Chaos Wastes come up to help... leaving just one warband to defend Chaos Wastes (you twats.. you're gonna lose us a zone!!)

all of a sudden... ZOMGFACEPALM!!!!

a warband of Order goes un-noticed through the skaven tunnels. they go right into Chaos Wastes, where there's only a warband of Destro there trying to defend everything... MISTAAAAAKE!!!

all of a sudden there's order in chaos wastes and in reikland.. and Destro is sandwiched between those two zones... the shaaaame.

only way destro could have prevented this??? by having a warband of destro controlled skavens roaming in the underground tunnels, trying to catch order as they were trying to sneak by!!!!!

so. bottom line is.

no more zone lockings.. you can controll any BO and Keep freely of zone locks, and if you manage to capture all of them, you lock a pairing.

underground tunnels that you can use to stealthly go from one zone to another zone, and the oposing faction can try to block your way by playing skavens

that's what i'd like =)

Creamy Glory indeed.

oh yhea, on another note. to use the tunnels you'd have to gain access to them. the side that has access to them can roam them freely, and the side that doesn't have controll can only go there as skavens, to prevent the other side from using them.

that's all

cheers

PTS Against All Odds test

As you may know, last night there was a PTS event.

The event was mainly to test two things, which were the Against All Odds buff and the removal of the friendly colision .

I am actually pleased with the way the test came out.

The AAO buff was showing roughly 170% when we had 3 Warbands against Order's 4 Warbands, which was a nice buff that will hopefully draw people to the fight even when the numbers aren't favourable.

The colision test was the one i was most aprehensive about. I am one of the few that actually liked the friendly colisions, mainly because it added to the realism of the game.

The main part of the test consisted of placing large ammounts of people inside Eataine's manor (together with the rest of the battle, obviously) and having more than one full warband inside manor is usually a pain in the ass because no one can move.

It was nice cuz the tanks managed to move close to the door and we DPS classes managed to position ourselves correctly to spam some AOE at the door. On normal behaviour (pre 1.3.6) we wouldn't have been able to do that cuz no one would be able to move :P

Another good thing about not having friendly colisions was that since there are far less calculations to be done, all of the RVR experience felt smoother and less laggier.

After the test there was the mandatory Q&A with the devs that shed some light regarding some subjects. I am not gonna go into much detail about the Q&A because Gaarawarr is posting a transcript of the thing, so you can read it there :) (oh and brulgnir has the mp3 of the session in case you wanna listen to it)

It was a very pleasant Q&A if not for the fact that someone decided to troll it (i still think it was Frenzik, who since last night i consider to be a major wanker) and spammed a shit ton of loud racket to disturb the session, and kept changing his name to go further down the name list to try and get his question answered. (Obviously Andy kept ignoring his question, because as he say at the start of the session, they wouldn't answer to trolling questions)

All in all it was a very pleasant test and Q&A (despite Frenzik) and after most left, Testpig, Gaarawarr, myself, and 4 or 5 more people stood arround just chatting and sharing our views on the current state of things, PQs, the new Warfront rewards, addons, Bombing in general, and we tossed some ideas into the table about what could be Mythic's big announcement.

Well, this thing kept me up till 8 AM, so, imma go get me some sleep.

Cheers.

Epikk

Insta Ap Giveaway!

* Ritual of Innervation: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.

* Ritual of Lunacy: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.

* Ritual of Superiority: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.

 

Hmm? Hmm? So all those times you were thinking "where the hell is all that AP I had a while ago" because I get bored of casting a 2sec spell when I could be healing you are now in the past. Yes, I just might be sticking to the AP ritual this time. The one thing I hated the most about it was the longer cast time it had. Made me less mobile and, hence, less happy. Was also reducing my damage output as the circa 20k damage I do each scenario come exclusively from my Waves of Chaos (or sometimes, if we're doing ok, my Windblock) so each time I refused to cast it because I was busy healing I was dealing less damage as well.

 

So look forward to some happy times AP boost. I'm still not happy that I don't get any AP back from the damn thing as I am not hitting anything at all. Not because I'm not happy about the damage I would be dealing but because RvR these days is too healing demanding for me to do anything else at my level. So I'm not hitting and, in result, not getting any AP back. But you lot are. And I know you love it.

 

Also, they have changed my favourite HoT ever! Although I might have to give up the afore mentioned Wave of Chaos to slot this tactic in.

 

* Warping the Spirit: This Tactic is now available at Rank 27. It has been redesigned, and will now give Tzeentch's Cordial a chance each tick to increase your ally's armor and decrease the incoming armor penetration of attacks against them.

 
These can be the things I'm most happy about with the patch notes. All the rest is kind of "meh". I'm not gonna pronounce myself over the whole Harbinger thingy. I haven't tested it yet. See it to believe it is my policy.

EDIT: Check out the instance number on that screenshot. Kinky.

Manor Whoring... I Mean, Holding

Got some 60% renown defending Manor in Eataine today, which put my total up to 1 and 1/4 rr in one day.
Also did one wing and a half of LV, one Altdorf siege and several scenarios. Getting close to rr 64 wich would mean me wearing my first Warlord piece but it's not worth it alone 'cuz of the set bonuses.

And here is, my moment of Zen.

Gogo

Isego Isegooo, me wuvs da name. <3

As for what everyone's raving about (no, I don't need to tell you what) I'm left to wonder: Why stop at Sovereign? I mean, few healing healers ever actually wear Conqueror or Invader, although us Zealots are more likely to do so with the new system. But it kills me that I have to continuously try to do a long god-awful LV run just for a pair of boots that would boost my healing crit by 8%.

I'm not the biggest fan of PvE but I've been doing lots of it lately. Just for those boots, mostly. And my other healers need at least Sentinel. I've tried to focus on my RR for a while but even so, Warlord isn't much better than Darkpromise. Please, please. Help me. Give us something like PvE tokens, or an invisible loot drop percentage boost or something. I've done at least 10 runs just hoping for those boots. At 2 hours a run at least I've invested more than 20 hours in LV. And I hate LV. I didn't before, mind you, it was a good change of pace. Now I hate it. And it is possible that, no matter how many times I run it, those boots will never drop.

Anyways. I like the good news for .6. I honestly miss large and small scale fighting. Any kind of fighting really. Like epic sieges where you had 50 tanks dying at the gates trying to keep the enemy out. You know what I've never seen though? People using those altars in keeps. I mean, I must have collected like 40k skulls already and never did anything with them.

Oh oh. A good idea. Well, possibly... For good RvR weapons you have scenarios. For RvR gear you have city sieges. What we're lacking is good jewelry and/or pocket items. Let's have that in keeps. There really isnt good jewelry for casters or healers outside of LotD. Most of them are very tanking oriented.

Hmmm? HMMMM??

No, I haven't been drinking.

Super Bock

Thats the name of the beer I'm drinking that prevented me from finding a better title.

Things have calmed down a bit and I got to play a bit more. Been to a lot of city sieges lately. It pleases me that I can do 2 of them in a row. Just today I was in one with Dex and we managed to win the first 2 stages but on the third one Karl chose Kardinal (you might remember him from a previous post) to be a champ and all was for naught. Still, I went back in and managed to get a fine Sov chest for Dex in the end. That was nice.

Loot wise, life's been good. Sov helm and purple knife for Ehone to add to my new vault tab wich I like to call "sweet loot I'll never get to wear cuz I'm so lazy to get my rr up" where my warlord chest, gloves and boots already await. I got to be big in a city siege too. Of course, it was only three of us on Destro side by the third stage so poor Tchar didn't have much choice. And 2 of us were healers so only two of us ended up being big.

I'd completely forgotten about those new talismans they were selling, especially the reduced AP one. I just bought one before I logged out, haven't had a chance to try it yet. What I definitely will not be buying is a Barbie pony. Only because I went to a toy store the other day and there it was, a Barbie horse. And I swear it looked familiar. I got home and I understood why.

The bombing nerf seems to have worked, somewhat. At least I can brag about having won a SC with 4 BWs in it. Flash of Chaos seems to be much improved as well.

All in all a good end to a very bad week.
Now if only I could muster the €375.000 they were asking for that apartment I saw today.

What's the Difference Between Us?

We can start at the penis. Or we can scream, "I Just Don't Give a Fuck," and see who means it.
But enough Eminem.

Different people lead different lives. For instance, for you sidewalk can very well only mean that which you step on when you go outside. For me it's a constant adventure of pothole jumping, slipery slope surfing and a stiletto inhibitor. (The representetive photo includes a man lugging a pink thing that made me chuckle much at the time.) When the ground is composed of easily detachable rocks like so, you live your life a certain way. You learn to navigate it from an early age, OCD suffererers skip to avoid the black bits, you learn the rocks are much too hard to kick with soft shoes, you kick them out of the road if you're nice. People that live in places where sidewalk is just slabs of concrete put together never have to deal with such exciting dillemas.

The difference between me and the rest of most of the bloggers who've posted about the new city is that most of them are part of a large, organized guild. I'm a pugger. So it was with much dread that I ventured into the new city, self-conscious but ready to try my best. "Just follow the zerg" said Gonk, the supatank. And follow the zerg I most certainly did. As luck would have it, and much to my delight, we ran into another pug on order side. As pugs go ours must've been better as we breezed through all the stages without me dying even once.

I got a Warlord Carcass-Guard on the second stage and a purple bag on the third. Had a crappy knife in it so I just took the crests. I flapped my papier mache wings in excitement at the sight of a cowering Karl among our super-sized puggers.

So yes, I too aprove of this new city. I found myself asking "Can we go again?" right after it was over. It totally made up for the uselesness I had endured trying to defend Caledor earlier.

Bring forth thy DoTs

I get a lot of visits from Washington and California. And I had someone from Brighton here! Aussum! Never been, but its in some of my Rankin readings. Lots from Denmark too. Makes me miss the broodparents. (You know who you are!)

So, Darkdeadly invited me to a ToVL run he was having. They had apparently been wiping on the 5th boss and needed an extra healer to help out. Lil' old me had only done the first 2 ToVL bosses so far but I offered to help out to the best of my ability. After they insisted I should have Superior Wards for it I broke down one of my 2 Warlord Crests to buy an Invader helmet and get to 4/5 Sup wards. All the good it did me, I don't think I ever got hit except on purpose.

Anyways, by the end of the night we were stumping on the final boss. First we were doing well but not quick enough and he was enraging, then with only one tank, we started wiping and after much blaming on my heals (no, I wasn't actually healing for 300, my HoTs were, actual heals were around 3k but who the fuck is coutning anyway) we had Semor come and help out and, lo and be utterly amazed, we still failed.

I'm not the best healer, I've said that countless times and I am also severely miss geared but, personally, I blame the tank. But I don't give a shit, I got mah second Glyph! \0/ Nau I haz 2.

Seeing as I had to respec to single target and buy the AP ritual (apparently, this together with the stagger is quite useful in ToVL. I wouldn't know cuz I've been there just twice and if you can do it without a zelly, you can do it without those 2 skills), I got poor again. Something always comes up to slice my finances down the middle.

So I hoped on Dex to try and farm a few city dungeons for curios. I had shelved Dex for a while because I had full Invader in the bank. Yes, I shelved him because of the good gear I had for it. It's just that I was going to take so long to get there I lost my motivation. It's dealing fair enough damage over time but still lacking in stopping power, aka, not enough deathblows. I'm thinking of trying to get some Darkpromise for it while I get to Invader but, by God, I'm scared of going LV with him and watching Zealot drops while not on the donkey. I just know they will.

As of yesterday, Dextrose is rr47 so it's not that far from his first Invader pieces anyway. As I am kinda hoping for the patch to hit and boost my Leaping Alteration and favourite ritual (i like it because its cast time is lower, you hate it because it doesn't give AP) I might start playing Dex more often now. That and its less stressful. I don't have to worry about what EVERY destro is doing around me all the time.

I even defended IC after I promised mysef I wouldn't bother until the patch came. We had an unusual combination of a Rift, Changing (me) and Havoc Magi so, even while being farmed, I had a good time. Eventually Order came 1VP short of locking and we all /loled at them in the end. Good times.

After that, we took the opportunity to lock some zones so I roamed around in a good PUG for a while, which is how I finally dinged. Looking back, I can sure tell the difference between being Annihilator geared (I was in it for the longest time) and my new Sent/Conq mix, especially on keep mobs. Before, they took quite a while to die, now... they don't. Looking forward to my Invader now.

Nothing too interesting today, expect the rest of the LV guide when my lockout ends and I find a good group to breeze through it. Any volunteers?

Left my banner in El Segundo

And someone got it. An Order something starting with an L.
What happened was as follows.

After a tormentuous climb full of blood, sweat and tears I finaly gripped that final rocky ledge of rr56. Took me a week for one measly rr. So I decided to actively go looking for fights.

And so it was that, last night, after a few fails against several bombsquads, I found myself hoping from BO to BO hoping to secure Praag's Domination lock. Mike had gone to bed already so, as I was camped in Martyr's Square with my leech banner, I decided to log his Choppa in so he could earn a little renown while he slept. Isn't that what true love is after all?

Two minutes to go. Me and a few more jumped randomly around the flag, counting the seconds.
One minute to go. Just as a percautionary measure I slap down a ritual with Waves of Chaos around us to spot any eventual Witch Hunter.
Thirty seconds to go. Two people leave the BO, out of boredom perhaps. I don't understand why cuz they lost the Field of Glory buff or whatever it is that gives you 100% more renown or 150%... or something.
Twenty-two seconds to go. The first Bright Wizard gets rendered in the distance. "Son of a sack filled with dirty whores", I thought. "Need help at Martyr's", I typed. But not much help came. To their credit most of the people leeching did come. There just wasn't many of us at 3am.

Still we fought hard but we were just stragglers, all things considered, and we were up against 12 tight-knit players that beat the crap out of us over and over again.

However the "one-of-their-tanks+me" combo was not without merit, as a strategic Knockback made me immune to melee attacks for some 2 minutes. Time enough for me to res a couple of sorcs and healers up to my position and finally drive them from the BO. After we lost it, of course. And after my banner was stolen.

So after this debockle we went around to try and protect other BOs from further attacks. We found them, eventually but again we failed and we all decided this was a good time to turn in, while we still had some of our pride left.

During the day, when we have some good things happening, alliance Warbands close themselves up. God knows I understand them but some valid players are left headless-chickening around always one step behind. Oh well, I have myself to blame for my loyalties. :)

On an interesting side-note, I went to T1 on Ehone the other day, trying to find a good place for Undead farming (for the Undead Tome Tactic) and I noticed some of our guildies were leveling some T1 alts. So I told them to make a WB, make me an assitant in it and roll out to the lake. I, having since given up on the whole farming business, parked myself on Ch2's PQ (you know the one by the cliff with all the ppl with the rifles) and res the masses.

Thus was the setting in which we discovered this wonderful BG called Wraith-something. Let's call him Wraithfail. Wraithfail started following me becase, and I quote: "I saw you ride by". Apparently he'll chase anything with a skirt that "rides by". The WB leader didnt want to lead anymore so the party hat fell to me. Wraithfail proceeded to yelling "GIEV ME LAEED1!!eleven!!" I responded with a kick. "ESCUSE ME!" he said after he joined back. "Oh, I'm sorry. I pressed the wrong button." And he apparently believed me. After some more rambling about how awesome he was and random "You're in a scenario, lol"s I kicked him again. "EXSUSE ME, HELLO!1!" he said upon reentering. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me today, always pressing the wrong things." Dude replied with "well, you could stop clicking my name for starters" and I replied with another kick. He came back, of course. But at this point guildies had come back to proper tiers and I left them to do whatever. T'was fun that bit, goes to show you can always find entertainment in lower tiers.

Have a pretty flamer picture that has nothing to do with anything.