Paying Customers

I recently reached rk40 with yet another alt, bringing the total of my rk40 characters to 5: a Zealot, a DoK, a Shaman, a Magus and now a Squiggy (not to be confused with Squiggzy, that guy's an ass.)

His renown rank is shameful, sitting now at 30. But I have high hopes for it. Squig Herders have been treated with a bit of indiference among the RDPS classes (not so much as Magus but hey, they're no Sorcs). This is why I leveled one, the same reason I have a 40/52 Magus. I wanted to see for myself what was so wrong about it.

Yesterday evening I went into a scenario and, lo and behold, a Sovereign piece for SH dropped. I stared at the loot roll for three seconds before I pressed the "Need" button. There was just one more Squig Herder in the scenario (compared to the whooping 5 squigsters we had in a previous one, among a total of 12 Destros) and he was probably, read "most likely", a higher renown SH than me. I won the loot roll.

This must've made him mad and I totally sympathise with his plight. But the thing is, although I'm a few months away from being able to wear that, why should I be less entitled to have it in my bank waiting for me? We're both paying customers, aren't we?

Some people believe only people that can wear certain gear or are relatively close should be able to roll on it. So far, Mythic have disagreed and I salute them for it. I got my first Royal crest on my main when I was rr35 and I still can't use any Sov but, by golly, now I'm within earshot of finally spending it. Who's to say that in the near or far future I won't be able to say the same thing about my squiggy? Me and any squigster who is close to 80 are paying the same monthly fee and have, for the same price, acquired the same rights.

The thing is, the time we've spent on a specific character does not entitle us the acquisition of loot, it only determines if we can or cannot wear it. The acquisition of such loot is determined by wether you've paid a monthly fee, and can thus play the game, and dumb luck on drop rates and loot rolls. It's not an optimal system but I think it's fair.

Same goes for the new sets and renown ranks. If you're willing to pay extra for those ranks, you're willing to spend extra time to get them too. If you're not, you're not. It's like almost any other game out there that provides its player-base with new content, only this one seems to be much cheaper. Am I making much sense? I dunno anymore, but I think I got my point across. I ninjaed a Sov piece and I'm sticking my middle finger up. As for the new packs...

Pay, don't pay.

I for one, will.

My Single Target Choppa Specc (I'ts Epikk!!!)

This is massively delayed, I know, but here it is

Epikk's Choppa Build and some more stuff!!! (AKA big wall of text incoming)

I'm gonna split this up into a few sections in order to cover Mastery training, Renown training (even though this part will get changed when 1.4 arrives) and gear, so, let's get started.

Renown Training:

Might up to 5 for 102 strength

Blade Master up to 3 for 30 Weapon skill

Oportunist up to 2 6% crit

Mastery Training:

I went full Hitta with a dash of Savage, meaning I spent 17 points on the Hitta tree (getting it to 15 and buying "Bleed Em Out" and "Strong Finish" on the way) and 11 points on Savage (got "Wot Rules?" and "Can't Stop Da Chop")

Gear:

Currently I'm runing with a mix of Invader Darkpromise and Tyrant. Will change to Tyrant/Warlord only in a couple of Renown Ranks but that's still to come

Head and Shoulders are Tyrant

Hands and Belt are Invader

Chest and Boots are Darkpromise

The reason for this is to get the two STR bonuses from DP and Invader plus the wounds bonus from Tyrant.

The added crit from shoulders and boots together with the MP from the gloves are very nice.

Obviously, MP talisman on gloves, and crit on shoulders. The rest i slot STR.

I'm going with a "Krogengz, Cutta of Doom" (City bag) on my right hand and a "Titan's Choppa of Anathema" (Invader insignias weapon) on my left hand.

The Cutta of Doom provides some needed MP while the Anathema one gives out some more MP and a little bit of crit.

Cloak and 2 glyphs from TOVL. Still haven't been able to get a Panahasi though, for the MP and the 4 piece bonus, so, the other 2 jewelry slots are filled with an Executioner's Ring and an Icon of Assassins for the Nehekharan set.

Tactics:

Brute Force: 160 STR

Wot Rules?: exhaustive blows no longer remove rage

Flanking: Added 15% damage when attacking from sides or back

Strong Finish: Increases crit chance with Hitta abilities by 15% and decreases my ability to defend crits by 10%

As you can probably tell from the tactics, my main focus is spamming abilities that require rage, and are from the Hitta tree.

Abilities and rotation:

First of all, my Hurtin' Time is always on. I realy don't care if it damages me,

because the added damage that it provides is simply too good for me to not use it.

Other than that, I run things arround Reckless Blow.

Now, every one and their mothers bash me for using this cuz, as most say, "it's a crap ability because of the 5% penalty on getting critted and you can do almost the same damage with Slasha or Go For Da Soft Spot", but more on that later.

By the way, I rarely run alone. I'm usually either in a party or warband with guild mates, so, my buid has that into consideration, and I allow myself to suck on survivability because I know there's a healer somewhere that's taking care of me.

I wouldn't dream of roaming solo with this build. I'm just too squishie with it.

Anyway, getting on with stuff.

I revolve arround 2 main abilities, wich are Bleed em Out (sweet SWEEET DOT) and Reckless Blow. No matter what kind of oposition i get, these two are the ones I rely on.

So, as I said before, I run in groups. That being said, right before engaging, I usually kick Git Stuck In. The 35% AA haste for group mates is precious and unless everyone has a speed lower than 1 second, it does make a diference (even though most people won't notice it's magic).

Right after that, there's a 5 second gap that I hate... the 5 seconds it takes for my rage to build up.

So, before i have enough rage, what usually goes on is Slasha -> Slasha -> Bleed Em Out -> Can't Stop Da Chop -> Go For Da Soft Spot

Slasha's debuff stacks, so I try to get at least two in there right at the start of the fight.

Bleed Em Out starts ticking in slowly but it really does a lot of damage in total

The reason I spit out Can't Stop The Chop (for the healing debuff) only after 3 hits is that I really wanna take advantage of most of it's timer. It wouldn't really make a diference for the target's health if I had used it as an opener instead of when I do because even at 50% heals, a decent healer would be able to out heal my Slashas and the first tick of Bleed Em Out if they went in after CSTC, so, this way I just get 2 debuffs in and the first tick of a DOT, then the heal debuff, just in time for the big strikes to go in together with Bleed Em Out's bigger ticks.

Go For Da Soft Spot should already damage a lot at this stage cuz of the toughness debuffs

After this roll-out, it's time for the massive damage.

Reckless Blow is ready to use!!!!

Ok so, it deals a lot of damage. It's actually my most damaging ability. But it does have the drawback of debuffing your chance to be critted by 10%, which can be a pain, so, after aplying the first Reckless Blow, remember to toss in a Try 'An Hurt Me to reduce your target's chance of critting you by 100%.

Yhea ok so the other guys arround your target that you didn't debuff will still proffit from your chance to be critted, but hey, that's why I run with good healers :P

Anyway, after this point, it's just a matter of working your stuff arround Reckless Blow. Just keep spamming it, while reaplying anything that needs to be reaplied (like Git Stuck In when the cooldown ends, Try 'An Hurt Me whenever you change targets, CSTC when the heal debuff ends and most importantly, always have a Bleed Em Out runing on your target)

UPDATE

I forgot to mention something... Obviously, knock down your opponents whenever possible. This is also one of the reasons I have Wot Rules? slotted. The knockdown needs rage and I really can't be caught on a situation where I need a knockdown but there's no rage to use it because of some other ability I just used, and the same goes for the other way around... can't really be negated of a knockdown just because I used a Reckless Blow.

END OF UPDATE

With this set up I currently run at 33% crit (counting in the crit tactic for the Hitta tree abilities). I have had higher crit rates at the expense of other stats, but to be honest, 33% already crits enough.

All in all it's not an awesome spec, but it's what works for me right now. It's obviously extremely dependent on gear (reason for which I won't be able to wear Warlord untill i'm RR69) but then again, what isn't?

And I think that's that.

thank you for your time reading through this wall of text,

Cheers.

Colossus MDPS weapons

Before I start, let me warn you that this is going to be a whining post, and even though there are more weapons besides the ones I'm talking about, I am concentrating on the high crit ones only.

Ok, so, yesterday we were running some scenarios and I noticed Skreavar (a guild mate's Marauder) had a sweet looking weapon on his un-mutated arm.

I inspected him and found out it was one of the Colossus weapons. a Mesis Djaf, to be more precise.

Looking at it's stats I got kinda pissed cuz it had more stats than a Ur Khsar Odji, which made me fly to LOTD after a couple more scenarios just to check if I was wrong about the stats or not.

Surprise surprise!!!

Most of you probably know what I'm gonna say next, but I only noticed it yesterday (yheap, I know. I'm kinda slow.. but hey, I play an orc.. I'm expected to be slow on the head)

THE CHOPPAS GOT SHAFTED!!!

I mean... if you consider Destro's 3 MDPS classes, the choppa has the shortest end of the stick when it comes to weapons bought with pages from the Liber Mortis...

Let's take a look at the WE's dagger:

Sweet looking thing tbh.

Nice crit (10% crit if you use 2 of these babies.. niiiice) and some pretty cool MP going on there

the STR isn't that bad either, and the same goes for the DPS

all in all, I like them. They could be better (I wouldn't complain if they had a talisman slot hehe) but they're pretty awesome and I wanna have their babies

Now let's look at the Marauder's hammer:

Not too shabby.

same DPS and Crit as the WE dagger up there, but less Strength and MP.

ok so it has +3 AP per second. that's a nice bonus. But does it really make up for losing 14 STR and 11 MP compared to the dagger? I honestly think not!

But still, it's a nice piece of gear that I wouldn't mind using if i was a Marauder with a page of the liber mortis lying around and some spare funerary masks burning a whole in my pocket.

and now, the focus of this post...

the Choppa axe:

same DPS as the two above.. ok

same Speed, same crit chance

oh nice. it has more AP regen than the Marauder's hammer. I'm liking it already!

hmm 2 less STR than the hammer... ok I can live with that.. I mean, it must be to compensate the extra AP point per second.

and now let's check the... errr... WAIT A MINUTE!!!! NINETEEN MELEE POWER???????

let me get this straight WE get 44, Marauders get 33 and Choppas get 19????????

that's almost HALF of the Marauder's hammer stat (14 difference) and, dare I say it... LESS than half of the WE's dagger (25 diference!!!!!!!)

what's going on here? I mean, honestly...

Let's assume there is a WE out there dual wielding those daggers

and let's also assume there's a choppa somewhere dual wielding those axes

They should be comparable weapons as we are talking bout same archetypes and same source of gear.

How can a difference of 50 MP and 32 STR compare to the 8 AP per second???

what gives, Mythic???

THEY BE STEALIN' MAH WS!!!

The new MDPS sets have been revised... the only thing i liked about them went away.. the WS 4 piece bonus on the offensive set.

the rest of it looks sweet though, but the one and only thing i thought was nice, was removed.

It was kind of obvious from the start that the WS bonus wouldn't stay, simply for the fact that the set is the same for all MDPS, and that would mean that WE and WH would be getting a useless 4 piece bonus. and that pisses me off.

Why the hell do we all get the same set? We surely don't play the same way, so why do we have to "dress up" with the same stats?

Ok, so, it's the easy way out. It kind of reminds me when Blizzard decided that they were gonna have some classes specific to each of the factions in WoW (you know, like Shamans were Horde only and Paladins were Alliance only) and when things got messy cuz of balance and whining, they took the easy way out and simply decided that both sides were gonna have exactly the same classes (so, the only thing that differs are the racial skills).

I HATE THAT SHIT!

one of the things i like about Mythic is the ability to differentiate everything. DAOC had fucking 44 classes. they were all different. they were split up between 3 factions (Midgard only had 14 Hibernia and Albion had 15) Ok so some are similar, in the way that a magus and an engineer are similar. But for the majority of it all, they were different.

Same thing with WAR. 24 classes. 12 each side. and for the majority of it all, they are different.

Obviously this brings balance issues and all that crap, but Mythic never stood down and never took the easy way out regarding that (at least in my book) by making the exact same classes on both sides of the game.

I can imagine the in-house talk between the Concept Guy and the Balance Guy over at Mythic.

Concept Guy - Hey, let's make new SOV sets

Balance Guy - wtf? you crazy? no way. too much stuff to take into consideration

Concept Guy - Oh, don't worry. we only need to make 8. two for each archetype.

Balance Guy - that's awesome! i can balance 8 sets with my eyes closed.

Concept Guy - and since everyone is gonna have one DPS set, you really just need to think hard about 3 or 4 of them :P nice ain't it?

Balance Guy - awww. i love you concept guy. you're the greatest

Concept Guy - i know i know :) you're pretty awesome to.

(I bet Concept Guy plays a Bright Wizard)

anyway, i lost my focus (and my 4 piece bonus WS) so i'm gonna leave it at this.

cheers all

new SOV gear for MDPS

As you all know, Mythic has been tossing out the stats for the new sovereign sets.

Up until now, every archetype has been given two sets. a set that matches the archetype and a set for DPS. (exceptions are the RDPS who get one for DPS and one for survivability)

Now, i don't wanna sound like a prick here, even though i will, but even though i think that each person is entitled to play his class however they want to (bright wizard as MDPS? sure. zealot as RDPS? no problem.. just don't try to roll a healer choppa plizzz) i always thought that it would be a good idea to have the Sovereign sets reflect the archetype of each class.

i mean... you wanna be one of the Everchosen's zealots? then ffs heal more. you wanna be is favorite choppa? then don't hide in the backlines and chop more!!!!

But apparently that's just me.

I've been discussing the new SOV sets extensively these last few days with Sara and she always tells me "then post about it" but i wanted to wait for the mdps sets to be revealed, just in case there was something there that would make me say "ohhhh! now i get it". But unfortunately i still don't get it.MDPS got the "one set DPS and one set survivability" treatment.

What i'm wondering is how's this gonna roll out. i mean, as things are today, we already see in some scenarios tanks out-dpsing MDPS (and i have nothing against it. i actually respect each and every chosen that deals more damage than a pure DPS class) and, taking the risk of sounding too obvious now, part of that is because of the survivability factor.
Simple math. if you're alive during 98% of the time, you're gonna deal more damage than if you were alive only 80% of the time.

Now let's take a sample DPS chosen (I'm gonna call him Ranark The Kryg just so he has a name) and give him a two hander. if he's specced correctly and he knows what the hell he's doing, he can bash some serious head and spill some soaky red blood. Kryg there, even though he's thinking "shit, i'm thin as paper without my shield" is tougher than nails compared to a choppa (let's call the choppa Betty, just for context).

Even if you raise Betty's survivability, i'm betting that Kryg is still tougher.

And this is my main point... you raise a choppa's survivability but it's still gonna die more than a chosen (for obvious reasons.. and that's how it's supposed to be) but since the chosen has a SOV DPS set, he's gonna deal more damage than the choppa most of the time because of the "up-time" they have.

Same thing worries me about DOKs. Give Melael (my sample DOK for this ramble) a SOV DPS set, spec the guy in sacrifice, and look at him go!!!

what Melael The DOK doesn't have in toughness/wounds/armor, he compensates by healing himself through the dark powers of the bloody hand god. (Again, i have tons of respect for most DOK's out there. don't get me wrong)

Again, i think everyone is entitled to play their classes however they want to. it actually pisses me off when people yell at DPS zealots for not doing their jobs (healing, according to the guys) and i laugh my ass out when that same zealot out-dpses the guy that was bitching about it :P

but my bottom line is... i rolled a choppa cuz i wanted to DPS... apparently i chose wrong.

let's hope everything works out in the end :P

cheers

Epikk's cheat-sheet of character names

Ranark The Kryg - based on Ranark and Krueg, both former chosens of The End

Melael The Dok- based on Meelmael the Disciple of Khaine formerly from NOX (we miss you dude)

Betty - evil guy from Kung Pow

PvE and Me

I give you today, The Eye of Sheerian which, albeit a bit of a useless or maybe just ignored morale 2, is clearly, the most visually stunning ability in the entire game.
Indubitably.
Word.

So everyone was talking about how they did the thing there at the place and the ones who didn't we're all like "aww, I wanna go do it too!" and I got to thinking "yeah, I should totally do that. By golly". And, by golly, so I went and did it. Yes sirree.

I'm talking about LotD powerleveling. Yep, I got on my Shaman and we went to get Nirvaesh's DoK up to 40. I got the Shaman up to 35 in the process. Which sucks since he's "da Green" specced and I wanted to get his rr up evenly too. Don't get me started. This is the one toon I won't respec for a long time. For starters I'd need to get new gear to slot willp talismans in. Maybe if I ever get it up to Annihilator level. Maybe. And then it's just to breeze through the rrs until Conqueror.

And then it got me thinking "what wards did you need for that big bad tomb there on the horizon again?" I'd heard you only needed Greater but, call me a rub-tugging* jamaican monkey, I was doubtful. So I asked Gonk, my new second favorite tank in the whole wide server, and he confirmed that all we needed was Greater.
Rock on.

So a semi-guild run is scheduled for tomorrow. I'm guessing we'll either have a legitimate rdps with Gonk on his Magus (Doomish) or he'll come on the Gonk itself (BO) and we'll have an MT and 2 dps tanks, counting Krueg on.... well, Krueg. Lets hope we find another good healer. I like Groobar. Everyone that helps me heal through N'Kari, I like.

And so it is that after our completion of yet another LV (still just the damn belt) and 4manning BE (still no damn boots. SRSLY! I've been trying for months now) we set forth to conquer the last big PVE challenge. ToVL. Gonk says he's confident we can do the first 5 bosses. I'm up for at least die trying.

Speaking of trying, I went to Gunbad (fiiiiinally) on the Donkeywrath, the dps Zealot. That Redeye set is so yummy for a dps healot, especially compared to Devastator. The last bonus for me takes the cake. So off we went, me half-healing specced, Sarephi the other zealot (and broodfather) main healing, Kahliah (the broodmother) on her Sorc, Nirv on Krothek, his rk 18 Marauder (or Mordor if you ever hear him saying it) and the new Chosen, Zorpus. Surprisingly enough our 5 man group cleared the whole right wing, including the instanced boss, and managed one of the pqs on the left before Sar had to go. Surprisingly because I was rk 26, apprenticing Krothek but the rest of them were 23/22. We walked away with bolstered egos and some Redeye pieces to boot. And we got to hear Zorpus and Nirv spill out finnish over the vent. That's always.... interesting.

All in all, a good time was had, we got to spend time with our new recruits and we're taking a well deserved break from PvP. Of course, you'll find us emblem whoring in Scenarios now and again (but never leeching, we try our hardest, honest) but I, myself, needed and still need a break from all the zerging.

And getting better gear in the process is a well deserved added bonus.

I will continue on with my PvE adventure-relaying at another post.


*Kudos to Mr. Robert Rankin for having written all my favourite books. According to this remarkable man, a rub-tugger is one who "tugs at his rubbing parts".


---


CASUAL READER READ NO FURTHER! TOTALLY USELESS BULLSHAITE AHEAD!

Character name meaning for the curious or otherwise no-lifers:

• Ehone Donkeywrath (means nothing, GOA/Mythic renamed me in a server transfer. "Ehone" sounds like a donkey to me so I call her Donkeyspeak) - ZL
• Dextrose Docinho (dextrose is a sugar and "Docinho" means sweet/sweety) - MG
• Trinca Espinhas (although "Trinca" by itself means bite, "trinca espinhas" is an expression used to describe someone very thin - its direct translation would be "fish-bone bitter") - DoK
• Nojo Debolso ("Nojo" is an ick, something disgusting; "de bolso" means portable/fits in yer pocket) - SHM
• Fofo (cuddly, flluffy, cute) - SH
• Chaimite - CHS
• Enfermeiro (male nurse) - DoK
• Donkeywrath (after Ehone) - ZL
• Pirilampo Mágico ("Pirilampo" means firefly but.. a magical firefly is something else altogether. You buy them to help the... handycapable?) - SORC

That's all of them I can remember, on Norn. So, if you see any of them stop asking me if I'm a tuga. Yes, I am and it's always just me.