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!

the way of the 1.4 choppa

1.4 brought many changes to the way people play their classes.

In the last few days I saw master bomber sorcs trying out single target specs, and full on damage marauders dabbling with defensive sets.

I am not an exception to this change, as obvious as I may sound.

With Epikk I was running a high damage crit spec (but then again, who wasn't?). Tons of melee power, capped str, high crit value, and some added damage tactics + crit triggered ones.

After 1.4 went live, my damage plummeted. Thanks to that forsaken "reduce damage from crit attacks" renown training, 2 out of 3 of my hits were being massively nerfed damage-wise.

It was a tough couple of days if I do say so myself. Must have spent around 50 gold and some 5 hours trying different things to see what now worked for me in this completely new world of post 1.4

for a while there I even considered a full defensive build, which would actually be something very very different from my usual suicidal builds.

But alas I crossed paths with an old friend called weapon skill. To be honest it's a pretty obvious choice, but one that didn't cross my mind at first.

So now, I ditched crit completely. Ok so I have some on parts of my gear, but to be honest I couldn't care less for it.

My current renown training is completely devoted to strength, weaponskill and parry. nothing else.

Thanks to this, I gained two new tactic slots (since there's no crit.. there's no need for crit-triggered tactics) and with my newly acquired high parry, I'm actually trying out Riposte for the first time. That and some healing coming from my exhaustive blows (25% chance) are making me survive a little bit more at least in scenarios (still running an exhaustive blows spec btw)

Best part of all of this? I'm still pro at dying, but now I can actually deal some damage to 2h tanks, and every order that trained reduced chance to be critted and reduced damage from crits actually just has a huge amount of useless renown points when it comes to fighting this choppa :P

let's see how this goes from now on. I suspect that with more people training reduced crit and reduced crit damage, more people will stray from crit builds. and with that happening, I can see people dropping the reduced crit training (or at least not going as far as 50% reduction)

Time will tell.

cheers.

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.

Working as Intended

I tried the PTS yesterday.

I got bombed the crap out of me in a keep by a flying Archmage.

Couldn't understand or purchase anything in the renown trainer.

Figured out the range you have to be from your flamer. Unfortunately I only figured it out by feel, much like the way I cook. Without measuring anything. Also understood that it has some vertical problems when it comes to range.

I only felt sorry that the templates were only for T3. Yes, I completely understand that they need to do some T3 testing first but... I feel completely underwhelmed when it comes to classes I came to know and love like Zealot and Magus when playing them without all of their skills.

Black Orcs are bigger, true, and, from what I hear they didn't have to mess with the hitbox.

There's a lot of good stuff there and I'll type more after I get what's going on.

Freak on a Leash

Magus changes. Yes indeedly.

So, what I know of it is:

• For Engineers, a portion of the character's Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, and Wounds from equipment will also affect their turrets.
• For the Magus, a portion of the character's Intelligence and Wounds from equipment will also affect their daemons. Additionally, the daemons' autoattacks will now deal magical damage - Elemental for the Pink and Blue Horrors, and Spirit for the Flamer
• For both careers, the character will begin receiving a new effect while they remain near their turret / daemon - Improvised Upgrades for the Engineer, and Unholy Empowerment for the Magus. This effect will start as a +4% damage buff, and will increase every 2 seconds by another 4%, up to a max of +20% damage after 10 seconds. If the character moves away from their turret / daemon, the effect will begin dropping back down, eventually fading from them entirely until they return to their turret / daemon's side. 

So my biggest doubt was: just what does "near" and "away" mean?

I found a non-answer.

"The actual range of the turret buff was omission by intent. We're still debating internally what the actual range should be. "

Andy Belford

Another interesting question was "Will redeploy reset the timed buff?", to which the answer was:

"As long as you're staying near the turret/daemon, the buff will build up; if you move away, it'll drop off.  If you move away and then Redeploy the turret to you, you'll see it start to drop off a bit and then promptly begin building right back up again once the turret "lands".

Nate Levy

And so I've heard say "boohoo, so not enough. I have no reason to spend 2s cast time and God knows hosw much AP (cuz I don't) to summon a meat bag that might give me a small dmg boost if it survives the flow of melee BWs inc to my position"... or something similar. Well, I think its's only fair tro stress out some other things that were disclosed. And I paraphrase:

• This does not involve tactics at all; the damage bonus is a passive benefit of having a turret / daemon out.
• Giving the magus/engy access to a loner tactic is not something that we're looking into at this time
• A network of multiple benefits (like a different aura based upon what you are doing) is something that we're more likely to do as a tactic - we are intentionally aiming to keep the passive effect clean, simple, and straightforward. Additional effects with more subtlety and/or complexity are definitely a possibility for future changes, but aren't necessarily our goal with this specific design.
• It's possible that buildup and/or duration timers may be adjusted in the future, but it's not on our plate right now.
• I currently hope to have these changes in 1.4 (with the caveat, of course, that plans and timelines are always subject to change as needed). I make no statements as to whether "in 1.4" is before or after RVR packs. =)
• Going after the enemy's turret / daemon should be a valid strategy to try and hinder them, as long as the turret / daemon has enough Hit Points to ensure that someone going after it is really focusing on it, rather than just tangentially happening to kill it via incidental splash damage.  Ultimately, much of the number-tweaking will be impacted by PTS results and feedback.

That's all I had time and patience to read but all of these statements (coming from Nate Levy) give me hope for the future. We can rest assured that our cries of "LOL Magus iz gimp" have reached the developers' ears and even if you don't consider these changes to be enough, at least there are changes which means its not a stagnant career like, say, a While Lion (*snicker*snicker*).

Cmon, we all have a WL in some server going like:



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.

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

Choppa Build Delays

i know i promissed a choppa build.. and i know i'm late

the reason for that is the fact that come 1.3.6 one of my core abilities is gonna get changed, and i wanna check it out first and see how much it will affect my game. (that and i don't wanna share a build that might become useless in a week or two)

anyway, as a consolation prize... have a pic of Betty :D

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.